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Date

March 17, 2026, 4:30 p.m. ET

Call Participants

  • Chief Executive Officer — Peter R. Beetham
  • Chief Scientific Officer — Gregory F. Gocal
  • Chief Financial Officer — Carlo Broos

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Takeaways

  • Cash position -- $9.9 million in cash and cash equivalents at year-end, with $22.3 million in gross proceeds raised from a January 2026 public offering.
  • Operating expense reduction -- Annual operating expenses declined by approximately $10 million in 2025, attributed to cost-cutting initiatives.
  • Net loss -- Net loss was $31.9 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2025, compared to $25.8 million in the prior-year period.
  • Research and development expense -- R&D expense totaled $9.4 million for the quarter, down from $12.4 million in the comparable period, reflecting cost-saving measures.
  • Selling, general, and administrative expense -- SG&A expense was $5.1 million for the quarter, decreased from $6.8 million year over year due to streamlined operations.
  • Royalty liability interest expense -- Interest expense related to royalty liability was $9.4 million in the quarter, up from $8.2 million, driven by interest recognition.
  • Annual royalty opportunity -- Seven rice customers with over $200 million in potential annual royalty, primarily driven by the RISE program's herbicide-tolerant traits.
  • Commercial milestones -- First customer payment received from the sustainable ingredients program, with a formal commercial scale partnership in expansion discussions.
  • Regulatory approvals and progress -- 17 positive USDA APHIS determinations, EU political agreement on new genomic techniques, UK precision-bred organisms framework live, and regional confirmations in California, Ecuador, and Peru that gene-edited products are comparable to conventional crops.
  • Operational consolidation -- Operations consolidated to San Diego headquarters; Oberlin and Houltsue, Minnesota, facilities closed.
  • Runway guidance -- Management expects existing cash resources to fund planned expenditures into late 2026, excluding additional potential financing.
  • Technology advancements -- Achieved an order of magnitude improvement in rice gene editing efficiency and completed positive field trials for second-generation canola herbicide traits.
  • Commercial launch timeline -- Initial market entry in Latin America targeted for 2027, followed by the U.S. in 2028 and India/Asia closer to 2030.
  • Platform expansion -- Expanded gene editing capacity into soybean and wheat, demonstrating high editing rates and successful single-cell regeneration.
  • Major partnerships -- Secured a nonbinding LOI with Interox for commercialization in Latin America and selected as a technology partner for the UK government's DEFRA-funded Light Leaf Spot Consortium.

Summary

Cibus (CBUS +3.65%) reported notable reductions in operating expenses and SG&A for 2025, delivering an extended cash runway into late 2026 following a significant January capital raise. Technology advancements in gene editing efficiency and expanded trait development supported new and existing partnerships, including a formalized path to initial commercial revenue in both rice traits and sustainable ingredients. The company highlighted increasing commercial integration with seed companies, positioning itself as a long-term gene editing partner and not solely a trait licensor. Management described substantial regulatory catalysts in the EU and UK as accelerating commercial conversations with new and existing partners across key geographies.

  • The executive team noted progress in negotiations toward a definitive commercial agreement with Interox, targeting initial rice trait launches in Ecuador and Colombia for 2027.
  • Cibus maintained that its royalty structure is central to recurring revenue, with edits in elite genetics directly linked to royalty generation under its IP framework.
  • Ongoing operational consolidation and workforce reductions enabled management to commit to aiming for annual net cash usage of approximately $30 million or less in 2026.
  • Upcoming regulatory actions in the European Parliament and ongoing progress with customer chemistry registrations are identified as immediate milestones under management's monitoring for 2026.

Industry Glossary

  • USDA APHIS: The U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, which provides regulatory clearance for gene-edited crops.
  • RISE program: Cibus trait development and commercialization initiative centered on rice, particularly herbicide tolerance.
  • RTDS platform: A proprietary gene-editing technology (Rapid Trait Development System) enabling precisely targeted modifications in crop genomes.
  • PBO: Precision Bred Organism, a regulatory designation in the U.K. for products developed through precise gene editing.
  • DEFRA: The U.K. government’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, which funds industry collaborations and regulatory approvals in agriculture.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Peter R. Beetham: Thanks, Carlo, and good afternoon, everyone. By any measure, 2025 was a landmark year for Cibus, Inc., not because of any single headline, but because of a convergence of key themes that are shaping the trajectory of the gene editing industry. Technology leadership, commercialization progress, scale, and regulatory momentum all arriving at the same time. We have seven rice customers representing over $200 million in potential annual royalty opportunity. We received our first customer payment from our sustainable ingredients program. We were selected by the UK government as a technology partner for its farming innovation program.

And in a watershed moment, the EU finally reached political agreement on new genomic techniques legislation, something we have been helping to shape for many years. Gene editing is no longer an experiment. We believe it is the future of innovation in farming, food, and agriculture, and Cibus, Inc. has been positioned ahead of this innovation curve for a long time. We have shifted to a commercially driven company with a powerful technology engine.

What makes this current moment particularly exciting is the intersection of our technology readiness and a change in how we believe seed companies are thinking about gene editing. For years, speed and scale were obstacles. Seed companies were interested, but the technology was not predictable enough to fit into their breeding programs. Our advancements in creating a more streamlined business with time-bound, predictable trait development have changed that equation. We can take a customer's elite germplasm, make a specific edit, and return it to them within 12 to 15 months. Because of that progress, we are beginning to see something important.

These companies do not necessarily just want access to a trait; they want to get more deeply integrated with our technologies. This is a natural evolution of what we mean when we say that Cibus, Inc. can be an extension of our customers’ breeding programs. We receive their elite genetics, we make the edits, and we return improved material on a predictable schedule that allows for commercial planning and coordination that better align to their seed improvement and market growth strategies.

Increasingly, the conversations we are having with potential customers are about ongoing genomic editing relationships, not just one trait in one crop, but the possibility of a broader engagement throughout their entire portfolio, where Cibus, Inc. can serve as a gene editing engine for their plant breeding capabilities.

This is highlighting opportunities beyond traditional trait licensing, particularly in high-growth markets like India, Asia, and Latin America, where we see potential for what I have described as outsourced gene editing, with partners accessing our editing capabilities on an ongoing basis. As we explore these potential relationships, we are maintaining our core licensing and royalty frameworks surrounding the edits we make. The edits are the product. Cibus, Inc. edits the genome in elite genetics, and those edits are connected to royalty. Regardless of whether a partner comes to us for a single trait or for a comprehensive editing program, the value we create resides in the edits themselves, and we retain that value through our intellectual property and licensing structure. That is how we intend to build a durable, recurring cash flow that drives long-term shareholder value. So whether we are talking about trait licensing, editing services, or some combination thereof, the roads lead to the same payoff: an annual stream of royalties on the edits Cibus, Inc. makes.

Now turning to our RISE program, which remains the foundation for near-term revenue generation and the clearest example of our core trait business model I just described. Remember, our seven RISE customers across the United States and Latin America represent an incredible $200 million in potential annual royalty opportunity through our herbicide-tolerant traits. Importantly, we remain on track for initial market entry in Latin America in 2027, followed by the potential U.S. expansion in 2028 and entry into India and Asia closer to 2030. Perhaps the most significant development was with Interox.

In January, we executed a nonbinding LOI establishing a framework for commercialization of herbicides on rice across key Latin American markets, starting with Ecuador and Colombia in 2027 and expanding into Peru, Central America, and the Caribbean. We have transferred some edited material back to interrupted registration work. We have recently received an import permit so we can return their elite rice genetics with two herbicide-tolerant traits, and we expect to advance negotiations towards a definitive commercial agreement late in 2026.

In addition, over the past year, we have demonstrated important progress in RISE, particularly in Latin America. Remember, this is a market that historically lacked access to advanced weed management solutions, and the demand for what we are offering is strong. Our partnership with SEAT, or FLAIR, which works with the Latin American Funds for Irrigated Rice and participates in the hybrid rice consortium for Latin America, gives us access to rice farmers across the region through a partner that has launched varieties in 17 countries.

As we have previously mentioned, we also have signed agreements with Semiano and Semias del Hula, two important Colombian rice seed companies, and completed delivery of rice lines with our HT3 trait to an existing U.S. customer. Beyond the current partners that include our long-term herbicide partner, RTDC, we are pursuing initial access to the Brazilian market, one of the most significant rice geographies in Latin America, and potentially Argentina as well, representing substantial additional acreage opportunities.

In India, we continue to work with AgBiar and RTDC to build seed company relationships where rice cultivation is approximately 120 million acres. Greg recently traveled to India and met with a number of leading seed companies and even the former Minister of Agriculture. The demand there is significant. In some areas, farmers are growing two rice crops in a year, and India’s regulatory acceptance of gene editing, demonstrated by the recent first planting of gene-edited rice in the country, positions India as a leading future market. We are initially targeting commercial launch in India around 2030, and we will keep you updated as we progress. On the development side, we are also expanding our trait portfolio in rice.

Following successful 2024 field trial results for stacked gene-edited herbicide-tolerant traits, in March 2025, we expanded our efforts to include additional trait stacking to broaden weed management for crop protection.

Stepping back, in just over a year, we have built a rice program that spans three continents and targets the world’s most important rice-growing region. That trajectory happened because our technologies deliver something seed companies have never had before: time-bound, predictable trait development in their elite germplasm. That is worth emphasizing, as it is a central component to the value proposition that Cibus, Inc. is delivering to customers. Another great example of how this trait portfolio model works in practice is through our collaboration with the John Inner Center on nutrient use sufficiency. That partnership is a funded program where we are applying our technologies to their breakthrough trait with potential to apply this across our entire crop portfolio. Different structure, same endpoint: elite germplasm, Cibus, Inc. technologies, Cibus, Inc. edits, Cibus, Inc. royalties.

Now, regulatory. As part of this perfect storm of progress, we have seen very positive developments occur in the regulation of gene editing in significant jurisdictions around the world. At Cibus, Inc., we have been patient because we understood that the global regulatory framework would determine how fast this industry scales. In December, the EU reached political agreements on new genomic techniques legislation. This was a watershed moment. Europe represents approximately 100 million acres of greenfield opportunity because GMO technologies have been restricted for decades. The European Parliament plenary session is expected in late April. This is the next big milestone we are watching very closely.

This comes on the heels of the UK precision bred organisms framework going live last November. We submitted our first PBO filings in January, and in February, we were selected for a DEFRA-funded consortium applying our RTDS technologies to light leaf spot resistance in oilseed rape. Being chosen by a national government as a technology partner is a powerful independent validation. Across the Americas, the momentum continues. California authorized gene-edited rice for planting for the first time, Ecuador confirmed our traits are equivalent to those developed using conventional breeding, and USDA APHIS has now given us 17 positive determinations. Just last week, Peru also confirmed gene-edited products will be considered similar to conventional rice varieties.

This regulatory harmonization is accelerating commercial conversations globally. With that great news, I will pass the call over to Greg to discuss our opportunity pipeline, traits, and programs. Greg?

Gregory F. Gocal: Thank you, Peter. I will keep my remarks focused on the key technical milestones that support both our priority programs and our broader opportunity pipeline. What I would add from the lab side is some perspective on the scientific results that helped drive our progress. In rice, in 2025, we realized an order of magnitude improvement in our editing efficiency. That translates to regenerated edited plants. We have optimized the reagents, cell culture conditions, the delivery mechanics, and the regeneration process, and we continue to push those boundaries with our strategic use of AI and machine learning toward identifying the right targets faster, predicting precise edit outcomes with greater confidence, and feeding those learnings back into each successive campaign.

Combined with our semi-automated workflows and robotic assistance, the trait machine process is becoming faster, more scalable, and more efficient. That is what is enabling us to take on the kind of broader relationships Peter described, with the throughput and the consistency to serve as our partners’ ongoing editing capability.

Turning to our opportunity pipeline, I wanted to highlight our significant 2025 technical progress across programs that are all available for partnership and represent meaningful future value. Starting with our canola traits, our second-generation herbicide-tolerant trait, HT2, delivered positive field trial results in North America last year, confirming both acceptable herbicide resistance and similar yield to the unedited parent. It is important to remember that HT2 validates the path for developing not only for that particular chemistry, but for any chemistry in this family, and is a trait that can be stacked with other herbicide systems.

For sclerotinia resistance, bioassays for plants bearing two of our modes of action continue to demonstrate enhanced resistance, and our collaboration with BioGraphica, using their AI platform, has identified several new potential gene editing targets. Our RTDS platform gives us the precision to go after multiple modes of action for the same disease. That is something conventional approaches simply cannot do at our speed. It is important to note that both HT2 and sclerotinia resistance have multi-crop, multi-geography potential.

In the UK, we completed our second year of field trials for pod shatter reduction in winter oilseed rape, showing encouraging performance in several customers’ germplasm. With the PBO legislation now in effect, our gene-edited material can now be grown like conventional germplasm, and we have submitted our first PBO filing. The DEFRA-funded Light Leaf Spot Consortium is a tremendous validation for our technologies’ abilities to target resistance to another key disease in winter oilseed rape, with 12 industry and academic partners and Cibus, Inc. selected as the gene editing technology partner.

What makes this technically exciting is that we are applying our RTDS platform to develop durable disease resistance, a more complex challenge than herbicide tolerance, and one that demonstrates the increasing sophistication of what our gene editing system can deliver.

On nutrient use, we continue our funded collaboration with the John Ennis Center on a breakthrough trait that has the potential to create significant commercial opportunities across our entire crop portfolio. This addresses the global fertilizer efficiency challenge, where only about one-third of the fertilizer applied in the field is typically available to be absorbed by plants. This is a complex biological system that requires targeted, specific edits—exactly the kind of problem our platform was designed to solve.

On the wheat platform, we previously disclosed in 2024 successfully regenerated plants from single cells in a wheat cultivar. Single-cell regeneration is the gateway to applying our full RTDS editing capability in a new crop. Once we can do that, the entire trait development process for that crop opens up. That, in turn, spurs opportunities for further partner-funded development in one of the world's most cultivated crops, and as the European regulatory landscape becomes clearer, we are seeing increased interest. Similarly, in soybean, in early 2025, the company achieved sufficiently high editing rates enabling expanded development of its soybean platform in conjunction with partner-funded and/or supported programs. The key message I want to leave you with is this: our RTDS platform is performing across multiple crops and increasingly complex traits. Every one of these pipeline programs is available for partnership, and together, they represent significant optionality for the business. Our technical foundation, combined with growing regulatory evolution, positions us well to advance high-value traits through partnerships while maintaining focused execution on high-priority revenue drivers. I will now hand the call over to Carlo for the financial update. Carlo?

Carlo Broos: Thank you, Greg. Looking at our financials for the fourth quarter, our cash and cash equivalents as of 12/31/2025 were $9.9 million. In January 2026, we raised $22.3 million in gross proceeds from our public offering. This capital raise meaningfully extends our runway and supports continued advancement of our RISE program and sustainable ingredients work as we move toward our near-term revenue milestones. Taking into account the impact of implemented cost-saving initiatives, including those implemented last week, and without giving effect to potential future financing transactions that Cibus, Inc. is pursuing, we expect that existing cash and cash equivalents are sufficient to fund planned operating expenses and capital expenditure requirements into late 2026.

Importantly, our streamlined focus is also contributing to our extended runway, and we are pleased to have reduced operating expenses by approximately $10 million across R&D and SG&A for the full year of 2025.

Moving to our operating results for the fourth quarter, research and development expense was $9.4 million for the quarter ended 12/31/2025, compared to $12.4 million in the year-ago period. This $3 million decrease is primarily due to cost reduction initiatives that we have implemented as part of our streamlined operational focus. Selling, general, and administrative expense was $5.1 million for the quarter ended 12/31/2025, compared to $6.8 million in the year-ago period. The $1.7 million decrease is also primarily due to cost reduction initiatives. Royalty liability interest expense, related parties, was $9.4 million for the quarter, compared to $8.2 million in the year-ago period. The $1.2 million increase is due to the recognition of interest expense on the royalty liability.

Non-operating income, net, was nominal for the quarter, compared to income of $400,000 in the year-ago period. The decrease was driven by the fair value adjustment of the company's liability-classified common warrants. Net loss was $31.9 million for the quarter ended 12/31/2025, compared to $25.8 million in the year-ago period.

During 2025, we completed consolidation of operations from our Oberlin facility into our San Diego headquarters and wound down operations at our Houltsue, Minnesota facility. These actions, along with workforce reductions, demonstrate tangible progress toward our goal of reducing annual net cash usage to approximately $30 million or less in 2026. This disciplined approach to capital allocation, combined with the January raise, extends our cash runway while positioning us to capture the significant biofragrance revenue opportunity ahead and meaningful commercial expansion from rice traits expected beginning in 2027. With that financial overview, let me turn it back to Peter for closing remarks.

Peter R. Beetham: Thank you, Carlo and Greg. Let me close by putting this year in context. Cibus, Inc. has been the consistent force in precision gene editing. We have built the technologies from the ground up with scalable and accelerated processes. We have engaged with many global regulators to provide technical guidance. We have established the customer relationship, and now those investments are compounding. 2026 is all about execution and momentum. Here is what we are focused on. On rice, we are expanding customer relationships across the Americas and India, advancing toward a definitive commercial agreement with Interoc, and pursuing discussions that could open Brazil and Argentina.

We expect to report on field results from Latin America later this year, along with progress on chemistry registrations supporting our 2027 commercial launch targets. On sustainable ingredients, we are formalizing our expanded partnership, targeting commercial scale production, and I believe we will be in a position to announce additional details on this program in the near term. This is a real revenue stream that is growing, and it demonstrates the breadth and broad potential of what our platform can deliver. On regulatory, the EU plenary vote expected in late April is one of the next major catalysts. That clarity is already reenergizing conversations with European partners and creating new opportunities.

More broadly, I am excited about the evolution of our commercial model. The fact that we are bringing herbicide-tolerant rice to a crop that feeds billions of people is exciting not just for shareholders, but for global agriculture’s future. I continue to see Cibus, Inc. as a coiled spring, and I am so proud to be leading this team into what I believe will be a transformative year. Operator, we are now ready to take questions.

Operator: We will now open for questions. We will take our first question from Matthew J. Venezia with AGP. Your line is open.

Matthew J. Venezia: Hey, guys. Thank you for taking my questions, and congrats on the progress. Firstly, I wanted to ask about the EU NGT framework. I know this is a long time coming, but does this change the company's thought towards CapEx toward the canola WOS program in the future at all? I know that is a crop that is probably bigger in Europe than over in the Americas.

Peter R. Beetham: So, Matt, thanks so much for the question. You know, the EU regulatory progress is really a watershed moment. You know, it has been the gold standard in regulatory globally for a lot of plant breeding work. In the past, it was GMO, but now we are opening up the whole gene editing world, and, you know, essentially, we are going global, which is amazing. You can tell why I am excited about this is because it has taken a long time, and that has been some of our frustration, but it really does open up opportunities. You know, for example, Europe is 100 million acres of greenfield opportunity.

They have never had traits through, you know, genetics with novel traits before, so this opportunity opens up. To your point, one of the major crops there is winter oilseed rape, and for us at Cibus, Inc., we have been developing a platform and a production system in winter oilseed rape that is really efficient. This is now what I was saying in the earlier remarks: when things come together like they have for us, all of a sudden we are in the situation where the EU regulatory fits, we have a production system, we can do it in a time-bound and predictable way, and we can cut years off timelines in plant breeding programs.

So what we are seeing is really a lot of interest from the major seed companies in Europe, but also that opens up the rest of the world. I will hand it off to Greg because I am sure he has a few extra comments.

Gregory F. Gocal: Yeah. Thanks, Peter, and thanks for the question, Matt. As you know, we have been running field trials for pod shatter in the UK the last couple of years, and we see that there is excellent performance of that trait in customer material where some of those customers feed the EU market and are using the regulatory system in the UK to be able to advance that material more quickly. The last thing I will highlight is the Light Leaf Spot collaboration, or DEFRA-funded consortium, where we are the gene editing partner, and many of the companies involved are seed companies that are core within Europe.

Matthew J. Venezia: Got it. Thank you, guys, for that. Next, I just wanted to ask if you could take us through the next steps to commercialization in Latin America for rice, and what the milestones will look like that you will report to the Street as that process gets closer when we get into late 2026 and into 2027.

Peter R. Beetham: Thanks, Matt. Let me give you the context of where we are on our commercialization path because this goes back to understanding that Cibus, Inc. has been able to build a process in rice in elite genetics. What I mean by elite genetics is the genetics that are really at the coalface of breeding programs. Our partnerships—our seven partnerships in the Americas, the five in Latin America—the genetics that we are working on and have worked on are their best genetics. They are elite genetics. The first step in that process is getting that material in and editing that material and getting it back to them within this 12 to 15 months’ time frame.

We have been able to do that already, and we have made those edits in the elite genetics, and that is the first step in that path to commercialization. Also, earlier this year, we were really excited to work with Interrut, who has been a great partner for us, on a letter of intent with regards to the full commercialization of the first two traits, HT3 and HT1, starting out in Ecuador and Colombia. We came to agreement with that, and that is opening up the path to launch in 2027. They will take on the role of chemical registration for the herbicide over top of our traits in those countries.

The material that we will report on during the year is the progress on that chemical registration and also the trait work that we are doing in their elite genetics and getting ready over the next winter to go into launch into 2027.

Matthew J. Venezia: Great. Thank you, guys, for taking my questions, and congrats again on the progress. I will hop back in the queue.

Peter R. Beetham: Thanks, Matt.

Operator: We will move next to Laurence Alexander with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Laurence Alexander: Good afternoon. I just wanted to touch on a couple of things. Can you give a sense for the kind of the trend line for the total number of acres touched by your technology, maybe 2025 versus 2026 versus 2027, if you have any kind of rough framework on that?

Peter R. Beetham: Thanks, Laurence. Let me go back to where I was with Latin America. I think the key here is that we are targeting 5 to 7 million acres in the Americas, and within each of the companies that we deal with, they take up a portion of those acres. Over the first three years, we will see that growth and that scale to those number of acres with the two traits. That is the exciting part for me: once you are in that market, it is the stickiest business in the world because they are going to continue to take those elite materials into that marketplace and expand into those acres.

As I have mentioned in my remarks, that represents potential of over $200 million annually for us. Building to that is going to take a couple of years through that process, and I think that is just the right acres in Latin America and the U.S. to start. What we also achieved in 2025 was the development of a relationship with AgBiar, with RTDC support, to look at the Indian market, which is a much bigger market, obviously, which is 120 million acres. We are not going to see in the first few years royalties come out of India.

It will be towards the end of the decade, in 2029–2030, that we will start to see that progress, but that opens up, again, potentially another $200 million of annual royalties. So I think to your question, it starts once you get into the market, and that is our goal in Latin America in 2027. It really builds over the first three to four years.

Laurence Alexander: Okay. Now secondly, can you help me with a couple of things around scale? First, given the progress you have made the last couple of years on the gene editing platform, if following the EU regulations potential partners are coming to you with GeneEdits as a service, what would be the kind of maximum throughput that you could do without doing a significant increase in your R&D expense or other investments?

Peter R. Beetham: This is the great thing about building it from the ground up. The team here has done a wonderful job of combining cell biology with automation and also the genotyping and automation, and so it does not take an enormous team to run through genetics pretty quickly. There are some real synergies, and we are seeing that. One of the experiments we tried essentially was at Oberlin, which paid huge dividends because that really changed our production system to be more like manufacturing. Why I am telling you that, Laurence, is because that is what drives the scale and scalability. Then you put on top of that automation and the experience we have had.

Now you add in AI, and we see some real efficiencies coming in the next year or so. As we have reported over the last six months particularly, we have really refined and streamlined our business, and that has been our major focus—building a system that we can scale to address the editing services as people come to us. That is the exciting part of what global regulatory opening up means, seeing companies come toward us with some really great ideas. Greg mentioned UK Innovate; that is a really good example. We have also worked with John Nisser Centre with nutrient use efficiency, which allows farmers to use less fertilizer. There are some really great things coming.

I will hand to Greg because he is in charge of a lot of the scale-up.

Gregory F. Gocal: Yep. Thanks, Laurence, for your question. A couple of things to add to Peter’s comment. Remember, because we are focused on using single cells from all of the crops that we work on, and because we are working with elite genetics, what we have seen both for canola/winter oilseed rape as well as for rice so far is that most of the lines that we work with from customers—many seed company customers—are performing well in cell culture. We also are in a place where, in addition to the royalty downstream, we will get some funding to cover those editing expenses as we make edits for either traits that we are licensing or traits that we develop ourselves into those materials.

With modest increases in the size of the team, we can manage multiple crops and multiple lines—whether they are parents for hybrids or whether they are varieties—within the platform for a wide variety of traits. They may be traits that we are developing, they may be edits that a customer or a partnership wants us to make, or they may be edits that we have a partnership where both the partner and Cibus, Inc. work together to determine what those edits are. Excellent question. Thank you.

Laurence Alexander: And then separately, can you help with the sort of when people come to you with GeneEdits as a service, if there is a kind of known value add—let us say a certain percentage increase in yield on a kind of rolling average crop price to keep it simple—what is the plausible, like, what kind of royalty rates are you discussing with customers now, and how has that changed compared to a few years ago?

Peter R. Beetham: Thanks, Laurence. I think it is a great question because what we are seeing is an uptick in the idea behind getting gene editing done more as a service. But what really sets us apart at Cibus, Inc. is the speed and scalability, as we just talked about. Speed is critical. One of the things that I think has been challenging in the trait market previously is a trait may be handed off to a company, but you go through five or six years of backcrossing and testing before it gets to market.

What we are seeing now with gene editing is we can do it in elite genetics and hand it back in a year’s time, and that allows them to integrate it into their plant breeding program as an extension. You stay ahead of the yield curve, you stay in the genetics, and that allows them to see the value add very quickly. When you can see the value add quickly, the negotiation on a trait royalty is very favorable to Cibus, Inc. We are in this to help the farmer, we are in this to help the seed company, and we share in that value together.

When you can see the value add on an accelerated basis, it is an easier negotiation.

Laurence Alexander: And then just lastly on the fragrances, similarly, can you give a sense for the scale of how many fragrances you could work on in one year if customers are interested at your current cost run rate?

Peter R. Beetham: Laurence, a great question. We have been working on a couple of fragrances to start with. I think what we see is, again, acceleration once you have a platform to be able to build out an organism with those edits, and so in our case, it is yeast. Yeast genetics are quick. I think what we have been focused on is making sure that all the downstream production work with our partner has been done, and we have been able to show that. I think that is the exciting part—once you have that process, it can be accelerated. We know that there are probably about 17 fragrances out there that we would like to go after.

We have been focused on the first few, but I think we can scale that pretty quickly.

Laurence Alexander: Okay. Great. Thank you.

Operator: Thanks, Laurence. We will move next to Alexander Noah Hantman with Sidoti and Company. Your line is open.

Alexander Noah Hantman: Good afternoon, and thanks for taking questions. To start, just on the results, the collaboration revenue and earnings came in a little bit below consensus and what I projected. Could you talk a little bit about what did and did not convert in the fourth quarter and maybe anything that did not come through that might come through in the next couple of quarters?

Carlo Broos: Thanks, Alex. This is Carlo. A great question. This is really timing. From a cash perspective, we are absolutely on track. We talked about this before, but this is the revenue recognition really linked to time spent by our people. If you look at upcoming numbers, you will see that we are absolutely on track as we spoke before. It is purely timing, Alex.

Alexander Noah Hantman: Okay. Thanks. And then maybe to follow up on timing, congrats again on the initial commercial biofragrance sale. Can we talk a little bit about the potential to expand with the current customer and what conversations you are having with other potential customers and how we get to that ramp that you gave of $20 to $40 million a year?

Peter R. Beetham: Thanks, Alex. This is Peter. Thanks for your question. I think the opportunities are broad when it comes to the sustainable ingredients program. What we are seeing in the fragrance side of things is different sectors we can go after. Fragrance is used very broadly across industries, and so we are obviously always looking at that. We have a strong partner right now, and we are working closely with them to build out later this year to full commercial scale, but also to expand that opportunity. It does not preclude us from going and looking more broadly. I think your question is very correct in that there is this opportunity that Cibus, Inc. would love to expand on.

Alexander Noah Hantman: Great. Thank you. And then last one from us. I know you mentioned current funds until late 2026, third quarter. Can you talk a little bit about how you are thinking of financing from here and your flexibility with that and just kind of the range of options that you are thinking about?

Peter R. Beetham: Thanks, Alex. I am going to hand this off to Carlo in a minute, but I do want to say a couple of comments up front because it is a really important question around how we are streamlining the business. The last couple of years have been all about efficiency and running to the near-term revenue. I think the team here has done an excellent job with some tough decisions along the way—some consolidation around facilities—but still, streamlining the business has been very much a focus for the management team and a focus across the whole organization. We continue to refine that. We continue to look for synergies in the organization.

What we are also seeing is opportunities ahead of us. For us, the idea of automation, the idea of really utilizing the best parts of AI not only in the science but also in the back office and the administration of the company, is allowing us to really manage that cash burn. With that, I will hand off to Carlo to add some comments.

Carlo Broos: Yeah. I think you said it well. I think two important things happened. 2025, the streamlining, and now, even recently, more streamlining. This allows us to focus on near-term revenues. That is the big thing. Then, of course, we had a January financing transaction, and, yeah, that will get proceeds, as you said, late into the third quarter. For me, most important, this allows us to focus on near-term revenues in rice and in the fragrance. Great context. Thank you.

Peter R. Beetham: Thanks, Alex. Thank you.

Operator: It does appear that there are no further questions at this time. I would now like to hand back to management for any additional or closing remarks.

Peter R. Beetham: Thank you. I have only got a couple of closing remarks today. I think we went through the details of the business and showed that we have had an amazing year, and gene editing in general, the industry is, as I said before, not an experiment. This is happening now, and we are totally commercially driven going forward in 2026. I would like to thank you all for joining today as well. Some great questions, and I really appreciate that.

For the three of us here, we are really proud to represent the team here at Cibus, Inc., and we are really looking forward to a strong future here in 2026, and we will keep you updated as we make that progress. Thank you all.

Operator: Thank you. This brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.