Eden Research (LSE:EDEN) — Interim Results

0:00 Good morning, and welcome to the EDEN RESEARCH PLC interim results investor presentation throughout the quarter meeting. Investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time. Just by using the Q and A tab that's situated in the right corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it received in the meeting itself. However, the company can view all the questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you to CEO, Sean Smith. Good morning, sir. Good morning, and thank you very much. And thanks to you all for joining us this morning. I'll move through the presentation at a pace so that we leave enough time for questions and answers at the end. As you might imagine, we've had a a good number submitted in advance of the meeting. And we'll endeavor to get to as many as we possibly can while giving enough detail around the presentation today. So without further ado, good morning. I'm Sean Smith. I'm the CEO of EDEN RESEARCH. I've been with the company a bit more than eleven years now, primarily joining from a chemical industry background and, with some relatively extensive experience in commercialization of early stage technologies as well as, in managing a number of large businesses for major multinationals.

1:14 And this is Alex joining me. Alex, you want to say a quick word? So, yeah, I'm Alex Hayberry. I'm the CFO. I've been with the company just over fourteen years now. I was an auditor back in the day and then moved into venture capital and then ultimately into industry and I led the admission of EDEN on AIM in 2012. Thank you. So moving on to a bit of background on the company for those who are new to the story. As you may or may not be aware, EDEN is actually the only UK based and quoted company focused on the development of sustainable pesticides for agriculture. What makes EDEN particularly unique in what we're doing is that we're a company that registered three separate active ingredients that we utilize as the platform for our development of new products to address the significant demands of the agricultural industry globally.

2:06 In addition, we work with our patented platform technology, which we've branded as sustain to develop these products in a sustainable microplastic free way. So that you're aware of the way we approach the market, our go to market strategies through a number of very strong partnerships that take place on either a global, regional, or even a local level. Here you'll see highlighted a number of our key partners including Corteva, which is the world's largest agriscience pure play company, Eastman Chemical, which is an American multinational, Sipcam Oxon, who is our strategic investor holding just over 7% of the issued share capital under Massimo Agro and Ethi Miyadis, who is our partner in The Balkans. Today, the business has 25 countries in which we have received authorizations for one or several of our products.

2:59 And we're very pleased to say that over the past five years, we've expanded the number of crop uses allowed for our products to well more than a 100. If you're unfamiliar with that term, one should think about a crop use as an expanded addressable market. So when EDEN brought our first product, Mevelo, to market in 2016, the number of crop uses we had on our label was one, literally one. And that was for the treatment of botrytis on grapes. We've been working very, very hard in the subsequent years to expand that label quite significant as well as adding new products into the portfolio and you'll learn a bit more about that as we proceed. Thus far the company has invested more than £19,000,000 in not only patents and patent registrations, but also on the building and development of registration portfolios.

3:54 Again, we come back to the theme that regulatory is all important in our industry. And I'll elaborate on that as we proceed through the presentation. Moving along, I mentioned a little bit earlier, EDEN really operates from two technology platforms. One is a portfolio of three registered active substances that are derived from a plant's own immune system. And the second platform is our sustained microplastic free encapsulation technology. This is the technology from which we develop our products that allows us to formulate stable, effective, safe products to solve problems that farmers are facing everywhere around the world. Why focus on sustainable agriculture?

4:42 It's great question. If you do a very quick Google search, you'll recognize that there are hundreds of stories in the media every week about pesticides and how harmful they are or that they might be. And in fact, it is that sentiment, the consumer concerns, consumer sentiment, concerns over pesticide safety that are driving policymakers globally to regulate many conventional pesticides out of existence. So while I said earlier that regulatory is all important to us, and it is, it is very much a double edged sword. On the one hand, we are restricting the use of conventional chemical pesticides globally.

5:28 And that creates significant opportunities for EDEN. Most, if not all, of the opportunities that we're pursuing today, I would venture to say that it's all. I can't think of an exception at the moment. All of those opportunities are created by regulatory activity. In other words, the removal of existing products from the market, not just in Europe, but globally, opens the door for products such as ours to enter with a much more sustainable, but equally effective solution for growers. On the other end of the of the sword, the other edge, if you will, we look at regulatory as being the rate limiting step in everything we do. Regulatory is the area in which we spend the most money. It is what opens the door or keeps the door closed to to further growth. And this is the area in which we focus a lot of resource in terms of making progress.

6:23 Moving right along, we'll focus a little bit about on the first half of the year 2025 and some of the commercial and operational highlights. And we were very pleased to announce earlier in the year that in California, we received a significant label extension to include powdery mildew for grapes on the label in California. So that you're aware, The US is one of our most significant markets. And California within The US is by far the largest market for our current label for methylomem. What that means is that California, just to give you some some kind of detail around that, California actually produces more grapes than the next eight or nine states combined.

7:08 So it is in reality the main market. We are also selling, I'm pleased to say, under state level authorizations in Washington State, Oregon, and a number of other states. Some of those states produce some extremely nice wines. California for us is is the ultimate target. We're very pleased to see the addition of powdery mildew on the label. We have that at The US federal level. So in other words, with the EPA. And we had been expecting it in California on the original granting of authorization, but it wasn't included. So we've been working very, very hard to expand the label in California, but also remove some restrictions that were uniquely applied for our product in California. In other words, the other states in which we have authorizations do not have those restrictions.

7:59 And so we're working very, very hard with not just the California regulators, but also our regulatory team locally in The US and our commercial partners who are SIPCamp US to basically address those restrictions, which will ultimately drive further growth in the business. We're also very pleased to say that we've appointed Andromat Kenya as the company's exclusive distribution partner for Mevalon in Kenya. Mevalon sales have been underserved by our previous distributor for many, many years. And I'm pleased to say that we've finally made very good progress in appointing an extremely appropriate and aggressive commercial partner in the local market.

8:45 Andromat is actually a Swiss company. Whilst not a household name, they are a very well recognized global leader in the stable crop protection industry. Their main focus as a business is on microbiologicals and microbiological solutions for farmers. And so EDEN's mevalon product, which is effectively a bio biochemical pesticide, if you will, fits very nicely into their portfolio. Their local team is extremely expert with with many years of experience and great network of contacts, particularly in the producer of flower end of the market, which is where the focus is in Kenya. In addition, we agreed a supply agreement with Vido Farm, which is a French pharmaceutical company focused on animal health products.

9:36 This particular animal health product is using Thymol for which we have a registration in The US. And interestingly enough, bees are treated as animals by The US regulators and actually in a number of other jurisdictions around the world. And so consequently, Vito would benefit or has benefited from EDEN's registration for vinyl by the US EPA, and they are in the process of pursuing regulatory regulatory clearance for that product, which is expected in relatively short order. In any case, what we're doing is we're helping Vito to tackle the very significant Varroa mite problem that bees have, not just in The US, but globally. And of course, last but not least, we were very pleased to receive a knowledge transfer partnership grant in conjunction with Royal Holloway University of London.

10:30 EDEN as a company has not pursued a significant amount of grant funding. In fact, we see it as a slightly time consuming and somewhat laborious process to secure these grants. And from an administration perspective, one looks at these opportunities and says that they're interesting, they can be helpful, but they do take a lot of time and resource to secure. We were very fortunate in this instance to have a very willing and very capable partner in helping us to secure this partnership grant from Innovate UK that is in the form of Royal Holloway. And by the way, Royal Holloway operates one of the preeminent seed laboratories in Europe with a tremendous amount of academic expertise, knowledge, and also a phenomenal seeds laboratory from which we are able to do our work. So we're very pleased to to join with Rolle Holloway and very to innovate UK to provide us with some substantial non dilutive funding to help us expand our portfolio in the seed treatment business, which we will say a significant amount more later about.

11:40 So in terms of the numbers, which is why we're here today, the first half of twenty five on the face of it didn't look ideal. We did see a drop in revenue and product sales. The reason for that is the reason behind the change of year end to an extent, which is that we obviously work in the seasonal business. The norm in agriculture is to have a March year end. And for the past good number of years, we've been facing an issue every November, December around that December year end of demand of the forecast that we have from our customers and when we supply forcing sometimes the issue of getting their supplies, getting the products manufactured in December and out of the door by the December 31 being our previous year end. And so to an extent, that's what's happened here. In the first half of twenty twenty four, we saw some sales slip into January, which then effectively meant that the the first half of twenty four was actually better than we had expected and better than we would ordinarily expect.

12:39 Whereas this year, half one twenty twenty five, we didn't see the repeat of that. We did get the sales into the December 31, and so it it slightly skews the picture. So we have now moved our year end to the March 31. We're in the process of making applications to move that year end to the March 31. That we believe will solve that issue. We won't now have the logistical nightmare, to be honest, of trying to manufacture during December the additional cost that can be involved in the logistics of moving products and raw material around at that time as well. And in addition, the fact that, as you might expect, Matt's holding manufacturers generally closed down fairly early on in December. So there's lots of reasons why apart from it being the the norm in agriculture to have March year end, but it means that we are now not gonna face those same issues, pressures, logistical issues that we've had.

13:34 So going forward, the forecast is now on New Year end 03/31/2026, we are still showing revenue of 5,000,000, which is the number that was in the market previously. That's that remains unchanged. The timing of the the year end, what would have been the December year end sales may now end up in q one twenty six. There are various benefits to us now not rushing to get that done by the December 31. But the message really here is that we're still ultimately seeing really good growth. And that is with the backdrop of, you know, generally the addressable market has increased slightly in 2025. There are certain things which I'll come on to which should significantly increase the addressable market. As always, it takes time to get to peak sales and that depends on the product that we're talking about. And again, I'll come back to that. But ultimately, where we are, we we still expect to see a good year or fifteen months to the March 31.

14:31 Importantly, in terms of cash, we don't currently expect the need to raise additional funds, and we're happy with our existing working capital requirements based on, the money that we've got. You'll note that the cash position has actually increased, as of today compared to the, the then half year end of June 30. And so, yeah, hopefully, this move at the year end will solve numerous issues and going forward, it will make for a much smoother path for all of us involved, not least our supply chain, but also our customers as well. And so in terms of the upcoming news load and and some of the the things that we we set up our stall at the beginning of twenty twenty five saying that there are various events which could lead to some upside in in the revenue forecast.

15:16 Those things are still in play. First of which is major label extension for Medellin in various countries like, for example, France. France is the key one. This is where we have the potential we believe for around €8,000,000 of sales addressing the down and build you market. So at the moment, we only have the prices on the label in France. The market addressable market for down and build you is around 10 times the size of that for the prices. So clearly important for us. We are very much in the process of getting that approval. We are receiving feedback from the authorities and currently we expect to receive that approval at the end of this year or early next year. And then full approval of EcoVelix in Europe. Again, this is a a key maybe it will be a key moment for us once we get that approval.

16:06 At the moment, we've got emergency or been using emergency use authorizations over the past two years sell the Cabelaix into Italy only. Again, the addressable market for the EU is significantly more as you'd expect than just Italy alone. So once we get that approval through and assuming that we get it in time for the 2027 growing season, which would mean sales for us in 2026, then we should be in really good shape for a a decent increase in revenue next year. The third one, commercial development agreement for insecticide, there have been ongoing negotiations over this product for a good while now and we've been keeping shareholders up to speed with, you know, generally where we are in that process. The current position is that we still have a good number of interested parties fundamentally.

16:56 All of the people we're negotiating with, have tested the products, understand, believe in the products, recognize the fact that it is a really good broad spectrum effective insecticide. So there's a lot of demand out there. At the same time, it is a very technical product as you'd expect as are all of our products. We need to agree with the partner, with the potential partner as to exactly how we address the market, what target pests we're going for, which countries we go for, the pricing, etcetera. So there's lots of moving pieces that we need need to negotiate and and that's where we are at the moment. We're getting to the tail end of those negotiations. We're at a at a position where we want to really firm up exactly what we're doing and with whom. So at the moment, we expect to make more more to update shareholders in our respects at the end of this year or early next year.

17:48 And And then emergency use applications for Cedros, which actually already received this year, but also EcoVelix. So the EcoVelix emergency use authorization application has now been made, so we would expect some news on that in the next six weeks or so. And then finally, commercial agreement for home garden. This is a really interesting opportunity. We are speaking to or negotiating with some parties that are not the usual suspects. So we shall see how those go. They're looking positive at the moment. Again, similar timescale of q four twenty five and q one twenty twenty six. But there's a really interesting opportunity there so we shall see how that plays out in due course. Okay. Thank you. So talking a little bit about our product development roadmap, it will give you a little bit more insight into what that looks like as we move forward. This lays out where we stand today with each of the products in our portfolio.

18:44 So if we rewind about, well, eleven years ago, in fact, around the time I joined, we literally had zero commercial products. Subsequently to that, we were successful in securing registration for our first product, Mevalone, which initially had one disease arthritis and one target, Greg's, on the label. We have worked extremely hard to expand the label. And today, I'm happy to say we have a significant number of disease and crop targets on the label for Mevalon, which ultimately translates into a much bigger addressable market for the product, not just in Europe, but we've also, of course, added The US and a number of other countries including Mexico, Kenya, etcetera to our our portfolio.

19:33 And that expansion has been driving the growth of Mevalon more recently in Central Europe as well. Key partnerships for Mevolone, and this this is not an exhaustive list. The key partnerships include Corteva, who's our distributor in France, which is obviously a key market for the future. Sifka Boxen, who is a strategic investor in EDEN, who have responsibility and done a fantastic job in Italy, Spain, a number of other countries around the world. And Epineas or KNE as it as it appears here, who have responsibility for very strong growth delivery and very significant label expansions in Greece and the Baltic States. So I'm very happy to talk about that in some detail a bit later.

20:20 Cedros, which of course is our second product, it is being commercialized primarily by Eastman Chemical in a good list of countries around the world. Where we have seen the most success is in Southern Europe thus far, so in particular, Italy and Spain, where they've made some recent changes to distribution relationships locally, and those are driving additional sales. And of course, the addition of Morocco has contributed particularly in 2024 in a significant way to sales for Cedros. The product is doing very well in the market. And as we've overcome some significant early manufacturing issues with that product, we're looking forward to continued ongoing growth. Of course, the third product, which is EcoVelix, is in sort of a quasi state of registration where we benefited significantly financially in the last two years from sales to Corteva under a temporary authorization in Italy.

21:19 As Alex mentioned a moment ago, we are going for the third year in a row for a temporary authorization where we expect that Corteva will sell the product to Pioneer, its seed partner, and we expect to see some growth on the back of that. However, what I'll also say is we are critically awaiting the full authorization for EcoBellix. We've been asked many times and we've tried to give our view many times on what the timeline like for that. I will only say again and again and again that estimating timelines for regulatory authorization is a very difficult game. So we do our best to give estimates that are based largely on a combination of the official timelines that are published, which are almost never honored by the regulators.

22:11 And also practical experience, which essentially says that the timelines are always significantly longer than those that are officially published. We do expect that authorization in relatively near future. I really don't want to be drawing too much on what that looks like, but we are expecting relatively good news at some point in the first quarter of the year, if not a bit sooner. But again, it's a bit of a fool's errand to try to be too precise about that. We are optimistic about the authorization. The Rabbitur member state is Austria. Austria, for those of you that follow the story closely, will recognize that Austria relatively recently granted an authorization for Mevalon. Mevalon and EcoVelix and Snowseacre are based on very similar chemistry, albeit different formulations, very similar approach to to formulation, etcetera.

23:08 Moving right along the insecticide, we'll give a little bit more detail around that. But as we've been saying for a good number of months now, we are in the process of negotiating rights to that product with a good number of potential commercial partners. We know we've developed a good product. The data coming from third parties, which is Unfold. Data, and we're talking about well more than 300 trials have all been overwhelmingly positive and it showed that this product has real potential. We're doing our very best right now. It really does come down to the technical marketing positioning for that product and securing a partnership with one or several parties that will take the same view that we do about the potential for the product and how it should be pieces be positioned in the market to maximize the opportunity for us.

23:58 And I'm I'm happy to field questions on that one as well. I'd say it's a fairly detailed situation and and bringing products such as these kinds of technical products to market is is highly nuanced, and there are lot of things to get right and a lot of things that can go wrong. We're very focused on making sure that we get it right and are confident that we will. Fungicide two is a product that over the course of 2025 has matured significantly. We are in the midst of still running a substantial number of trials on late life of potato. So far, we are extremely excited about the opportunities that we're seeing there. I'll elaborate a little bit more for you in a couple of slides here on that product and how it's progressing. It's right to say that we are already engaged as we always do at this stage with potential commercial partners who are running their own evaluations at the moment. And that's on a global basis, by the way.

24:53 So not not just in Europe, but also in The US and some other key markets. And then, of course, what we creatively call insecticide two, which targets a completely different class of insect pests. So it's important for people to remember that an insecticide is not an insecticide. Insecticides can be very different in the targets that they are effective against. And so leopardoptera or or otherwise known as moths are very different pests than, say, for example, aphids are. Right? Physically, they're different. Biologically, they're different. They're the way they behave and when they feed and how they feed is different. And so the formulation of products to address these kinds of different targets, it's not a trivial exercise. I'm pleased to say that our team here is doing a really good job of doing that.

25:45 So in terms of the revenue potential by product, this is just to give you a broad brush idea as to roughly where we are in the relative short term through to the longer term. So you can see that the first line here is mevalometritis. Obviously, that's our first product, which is mainly called Mevalon, but also marketed as a row in Spain or Trilogy in Italy, and you can see various names all around the world. But at the moment, we expect peak, sales, and this chart here is all about the the peak sales potential around €3,000,000 in The EU alone. Let's put that into context. At the moment, we're about just over 2,000,000, so we're getting to that point of peak. And peak means the the widest possible label with the reasonable number of applications that we can have for that particular product.

26:32 So in The US, we think we should be around a similar sort of level actually. As as you'll know, we've only just got the slightly widened authorization in California, so there's still some way to go. Generally, we expect peak sales to occur in year three. The the curve can be a straight line up to that those peak sales. It can either be low year one or high year one initially. We saw around 80% of peak sales in year one when we first launched Trilogy or Nevalon initially back in 2016. So it does vary product by product, country by country, but generally around three years to peak following the first year of registration. Metabolic Downy Mildew, this is the one I touched on already. This is the Downy Mildew opportunity in France in particular where we expect peak sales of around €8,000,000.

27:21 So hence, we're quite so keen to as I'm sure all of you are as well to for us to get the authorization through from the French regulators. And then with SEDROs, around €2,000,000 in The EU. We're we're getting there. We're at around €1,000,000 at the moment, but we have seen some good growth over the past couple of years. The US is a really big opportunity, and at the moment, we are working to find the right partner to take that forward. In The US. We do already have authorization for that product with a very wide label actually. So ultimately, that could be a really nice product for us and a nice opportunity. EcoVelix, this is the the peak sales around €4,000,000, which we would expect to get to actually much quicker than, with other products. Why? Because there are no viable will be no viable alternatives in the market, in the next year or so. So that one can be a really quick nice win. It's a very nice margin product for us as well. So getting the full EU authorization will be a really nice turning point for us.

28:26 And then finally, insecticide, and this is what we're quite excited about. Excited about the insecticide product is that this is a really big opportunity for us, again, in The EU and US alone of around €13,000,000 combined once we have registration and sales at at peak. So in the sort of short to medium term, we would expect to get to peak revenues of around €39,000,000 if we then expand that to the global opportunity for these products alone. And to remind you, this isn't it. We haven't gotten here insecticide two, fungicide two, other opportunities that are being developed in the background. But for these opportunities alone, we think we could see total global sales of around a €135,000,000. Okay. Thank you. We've already talked a little bit about some of our commercial partners, but just to remind you, you know, some of those quite substantial commercial partners are the likes of Corteva, Sitka, and Eastman. I do want to touch on this.

29:23 I think there was actually a question about this, which we'll we'll remind you of when we get to that section of the presentation. But these are not the only people within we're working. And in fact, I'm pleased to say that our still relatively new commercial team has done a fantastic job of broadening out the number of companies within we are either planning partnership or who are with with whom we are exploring partnerships. So I don't I don't wanna bore anyone with the same old names again and again and again. And yet, I will say that each of our commercial partners has done a fantastic job of expanding the markets in which they operate, and we are very eager to continue that expansion. The adding or the addition of Andromat to our portfolio of partners initially with responsibility for Kenya and East Africa has been a real eye opener in terms of what the potential is in Kenya and and how with the right marketing strategy and the right local reach, one might realize significant opportunity from what is a relatively small market initially.

30:32 Moving right along, and I think it's it's important to remind everyone and particularly for those of you who are are new to the story, the question is all about, you know, why don't people buy EDEN's products, and it's a great question. Ultimately, the this is a product based business. You know, we number of years ago, spent a lot of time talking about our technology, you know, our platforms, active substances, delivery formulations, sustain, etcetera. All those things are important and they're critical elements of ultimately developing great products. And I'm pleased to say that that, you know, we've done a good job of doing that. We we attended a conference last week for one of our key distribution partners, and there was someone who had approached me literally within minutes of arriving to tell me how important Mevalon had been in his portfolio when he was with a different distributor, And he went on at length after a very long day of travel, I'm not about how important Mevolone was and how effective it was and how he loved the product and how he was hoping that in his new role with a new partner that they might also gain access to Medline because it was so important with their portfolio. So I love hearing stories like that.

31:47 And we continue to develop great products. SEDROZ is a great product and, of course, all of the subsequent products in the pipeline aiming to have that same set of characteristics. So the reason farmers are buying them is because they work and we can be cost competitive in certain segments of the market. That's number one. But farmer does not tend to buy products that don't work and we have to always remind ourselves of that. It does not matter how good we are at marketing. It does not matter how within we partner. If we don't have a product that works, that delivers the value to the pharma, we're not going to get anywhere with it whatsoever. So that's that's ultimately very critical. Also outstanding characteristics of the products is that fit very, very nicely into the modern way in which farmers are protecting their crops from disease and also insect pests. And by that, I mean, we we now fit very nicely into programs where conventional fungicides or conventional insecticides are used in combination with products such as ours to one, reduce environmental burden and and the human and and ecological health burden that some conventional products may bring to the table. In addition to that, we help combat resistance, which is a very significant issue for for growers globally.

33:08 And of course, we we fit into integrated pest management programs, which again are the modern way of looking at basically improving productivity on farms globally. So in terms of the the shareholding picture, this just gives obviously an overview of our institutional shareholders that we currently have primarily for those who aren't aware of the company and are new to the story. So we have a good number of institutional investors such as Gresham, who are our largest, and then Octopus. Interestingly, we also have Sipcam Oxon, whose name you referred throughout this presentation, who came in a a good number of years ago as a strategic partner at a time where we signed multiple agreements with them, including distribution agreements and an option agreement. So they've been a partner for a good number of years.

33:55 They're actually a Italian based multinational turnover of around €700,000,000. So a really nice partner to have, and they continue to support the company over the past few fundraisers. And then we have Canaccord, Unicorn, Maven, Rathbones, all of whom have supported us again in the past one or two funding rounds that we've we've done. And then in terms of directors, we have around 2% now. Both Sean and I got a bargain this morning and bought some more shares to support the interim results. So we're now the the largest shelves of directors. But, yeah, we absolutely, of course, believe in the story and I'm very happy to support the company. So we'll delve into a little bit more detail. And in the interest of time, I'll I'll I won't go into too much detail, I hope. But just to shed some light on products that are in the development pipeline.

34:49 So we've talked a bit about Mevelo and we've talked about Cedros to some extent. Now just to focus a bit on the development products. So as I mentioned earlier, EcoVelix, we've enjoyed sales to Corteva. EcoVelix over the last two years under emergency authorizations, we are anticipating a third year of exactly that. And of course, next year, we anticipate full authorization for EcoVelix across Europe. EcoVelix is a seed treatment. This is our first product in the seed treatment category. Now just to to kind of give you an overview, our first three products each represent products in three completely different categories, and that's very important in terms of the future of the business.

35:36 I'm looking to diversify the business, not just in terms of geography, not just in terms of the partners with whom we work, not just in terms of label, but actually in terms of the product category. So it's a very important aspect of it. And as you'll see in our, to some extent, first half results of this year, exposure to more limited markets can produce less than desirable consequences when one looks at variability over time and and sort of lumpiness as I would call it over time. Again, EcoVelix represents a new product and a new category, a product product category which is not just limited to repellents, which is what EcoVelix is, but also has products within it that are fungicides, insecticides, and nematicides.

36:28 And if those names ring a bell to you, what it should be saying to you is burn repellents are not the only opportunity that we have within the seed treatment space. And this is a good reason for our KDP partnership, for example, to further develop the use of EDEN's products in the seed treatment category. With EcoVelix, our partner will exclusively is is Corteva in Europe. And again, the focus is replacing two incumbent conventional chemicals, one of which remains on the market under emergency uses, but will be removed from the market imminently. We have spent a number of years working with Corteva to develop this product. But I do want to highlight and for those of you who followed the story for a while, it may seem as if these types of developments drag on. And I I share the sentiment and I understand it very well, but, of course, working on these projects day in and day out, it can feel as if it takes a while. The reality of the situation is that with Corteva, we've gone from, you know, concept or idea to proof of concept to the early registration phases including an emergency authorization in three years.

37:43 I I have to say in all my experience in the industry, I have never seen a product move through the process that quickly. And that's down to a number of factors. One is simply farmer demand for a product such as this because, of course, farmers have to support the emergency authorizations themselves, but also the enthusiasm and the dedication of our partner Corteva in bringing that product to market. And, of course, we have to thank the regulators for removing the incumbent products from the market. So, you know, we've had a nice tailwind there. We are now at the stage with EcoVelix's commercialization where regulatory has ceased being a tailwind and is now a little bit of a headwind in the sense that we are waiting for the regulators to go through their process and ultimately grant their authorization to deploy. They don't have an easy job.

38:36 They don't have an abundance of resource. And they have a lot of people yelling at them all the time to grant them authorization. So I don't envy the job they're doing. I absolutely sympathize. And at the same time, we're very much eager for them to get through the process and and hopefully grant authorization to EcoVelix so we can begin to benefit from all the effort that is going to it thus far. Moving along to the insecticide, I know 20 e, apologies, that's its development code name. We're currently working on a on a trade name for that. This is a product that is based on, of course, EDEN primarily on EDEN's terpene chemistry, but we're happy to say that as a part of our approach to formulating a product such as this, one of the real innovations that we're bringing is something we're provisionally branding as TerpeneLink.

39:25 And TerpeneLink is a way of bringing hydrophobic active substances in a stable way into a formulated product such as I n o 20. It's something new to the EDEN portfolio. It's a new approach to formulating. And what this allows us to do is to bring what's called an emulsifiable concentrate formulation to market. So it's our first divergence from the use of sustain. And there are numerous reasons why we haven't used sustain in this formulation. But what's most important to remember here is insecticides tend to work through a different, very different mode of action than, for example, fungicides do. And that is not to say that sustain could not be useful in insecticide formulations.

40:12 But in this particular instance, our approach to solving the problem required a slightly different tactic. And I'm happy to say that our team was very successful in delivering what turns out to be a very good formulation. A couple of other key points about this product is that here, the the way that the product works is through mechanical cell wall disruption, which is very similar to how the active substances work in our other formulations. And in addition to that, the product does a very, very good job of getting to the insects where they tend to hide and and hide indeed they do. They they have adopted behaviors that make them very difficult to treat in many cases. And so this formulation does a good job of seeking them out and and ultimately reducing their impact for farmers.

41:05 Ultimately, we also see very good activity against different life stages of these four target organisms. And what does that mean? Well, that means that ultimately over time in the field, farmers will see an increasing benefit from the use of this product. So the initial impact of the product is very clear, but over time that impact expands as different life stages are targeted by iron twenty. And this gives you and apologies, this isn't the best slide, but my my PowerPoint slide, our skills are somewhat limited at times. This gives you a good illustration of how we are targeting white flies. And this is a summary of nine different registration trials showing the efficacy of INM twenty versus a conventional reference as well as a biological reference.

41:57 And ultimately, what this is showing you is efficacy. And what we're aiming for is to be at least as good as a biological reference and nearly as good as the conventional controls. And I can show you, we have literally hundreds and hundreds of trials where we repeatedly demonstrate that I n m twenty is at least as good, if not better, than the other biocontrol products that are on the market. And based on these hundreds of trials, we are focused very much on the technical positioning of the product in the market to ensure that we capture maximum value from it and that we achieve maximum market share ultimately. And finally, moving on to late blight, which is the next product in our portfolio. I mentioned earlier that we've seen some very good results over the course of 2025.

42:50 We also had some very encouraging results in 2024. And so we have expanded our discussions with potential commercial partners putting the product into their hands throughout the course of 2025 and that work is ongoing. If you're not familiar, Lake Blight is actually what was the actual cause of the Irish potato famine. And as a disease, whilst it has been managed for a good number of decades, regulatory action has removed some of the most important tools that farmers have had, particularly in Europe over those intervening decades. And so what that means is a a product that was I'm sorry. A disease that had been considered tackled ultimately has again become relevant and actually significant in terms of cost to farmers. Here you see estimated to be a billion euros annually in terms of losses. So this is a very significant opportunity.

43:49 For us, potatoes are grown on a very large number of hectares, 1,700,000 hectares across the EU. And ultimately, this is a very significant industry among within the food sector. The opportunities for EDEN here are to bring a product to market, which helps with resistance management, which competes with biological fungicides of which there are very few that have adequate performance. And which in fact is an excellent partner for conventional control. And so here you can see, and apologies, this photo isn't great, but these are these are normally taken by our folks out in the field. Untreated plot in the foreground in this photo, you can see significant damage to to the potatoes.

44:39 This is what late blight does. And in fact, 2025 was a very significant year in terms of late blight damage. And in the background, in the immediately adjacent plot, you can see the benefit of using one of our experimental formulation. This is one of the two lead product candidates that we have at the moment, both of which are looking very good. Moving right along, you know, I can share with you the performance of the our two lead candidates candidates in terms of efficacy. This is a comparison of our two formulations and it's also comparing with conventional control. Now I should mention that this is a conventional program. So it's not just one fungicide. It's multiple fungicides used in a program to achieve minimum resistance and maximum efficacy.

45:30 In our trials, and we we have the three product products that are in the three groupings to the right of the of the conventional program. And what we're showing you here is our single formulations used by themselves. So not in a program all by themselves in a situation where there is very significant disease pressure. And here we what we're demonstrating is a very good in fact, an unprecedented level of control for a bio biocontrol form. So you can see why we're very excited about this and we have a good number of partners who are interested as well. So with all of that said, I hope despite some, let's say, less than the stellar numbers for the first half, hope it will share our enthusiasm for the future of the business.

46:21 And you'll recognize that we are putting a significant amount of effort into advancing the business commercially and technically and of course from a regulatory perspective. And with that said, I suggest we move on to in the fifteen minutes we have left questions and answers. So if you don't mind, I will leap right into those. The first of those is, does the recent news that Corteva may split its seed business from its pesticide business impact us in any way? And that's a great question. First of highlight unless something has happened this morning that I'm unaware of, that is only a rumor. And although, I I probably like like many of you, these kinds of rumors also often have some level of substance behind them. We have not, of course, heard this directly from Corteva.

47:13 But I should remind everyone that Corteva was formed from the merger of Dow and DuPont. Dow largely bringing crop protection and DuPont largely bringing a very robust seeds business, which makes them one of the most significant seed players in the world. That business was combined to basically create Corteva, which today is the world's largest agro science pure play. That entity then spun off the old businesses of Dow and the other businesses of DuPont. So that this is a sort of a merger and then a demerger, and it seems like if this rumor is true, there may be yet another demerger. The logic of which escapes me that I would assume that shareholder value is a key consideration here. We don't anticipate that this would have an impact on us. What one should remember is that the EcoVelix development has been focused on the crop protection business.

48:10 So we sell EcoValix to Corteva Crop Protection. Corteva Crop Protection sells product to Corteva Seeds or Pioneer in this particular case. We have relationships with both entities. I wouldn't expect that there would be a significant issue impacting us, albeit I should caveat that by saying it is very difficult to anticipate these types of things. What I would say is effectively the entities are already operating somewhat separately anyway. So there may be some internal focus for a period of time, but we're not overly concerned about this. We have good good friends and partners on both sides of that story. Moving on to the next one. So, Gordon, in previous investment company presentations, management said the shares were worth north of 20 p. Why do you think investors can't currently see that value? I think there's numerous parts of this answer. I think that they, I'm gonna say, that the markets are still not in a really great state. Of course, there have been huge outflows from UK funds in particular, but I think more on a micro basis rather macro basis. I think there are there are you know, we set out our store at the beginning of the year saying this what is we're going to do. Here are some things that we think will happen.

49:26 We still think those things are going to happen. We believe that they they will. So we need to meet those targets. We need to instill confidence in prospective investors. We need to keep meeting the targets that we set ourselves, which we have over the past, you know, good number of years. We need to do the deals and increase the sales and see the growth that everybody is expecting. Honestly, the regulators aren't really helping us in lots of respects and that they are taking longer than even we had expected with our good understanding and experience of how slow they can be. But what we do know is that we have got really good products, that we do have massive opportunity in front of us, and that we will get there. And as we start getting there and we start to convey that confidence and start to prove ourselves, then I have no doubt, hence my reference to getting a bargain this morning by buying the shares that we will see a massive increase in value in the the share price and market cap of the company.

50:20 Okay. Thank you. The next question is a little bit about commercial agreements and the timing of those. And it mentions that in the 2024 interims presentation, commercial agreements for insecticide and Hummin Garden were anticipated and we've given an estimate of the timeline. So what what I will say is that as as you'll hopefully understand at least to some level, anticipating the timelines for commercial agreements is a very difficult job particularly when we're talking about bringing new products and new technologies to the market. Each and every potential commercial partner that we talk to will want to go off and do their own work. As I mentioned a bit earlier, they want to kick the tires for themselves. They want to understand what the product is and how it can demonstrate itself in the market. And they they they will listen to us. They will take the data that we put in front of them and use it as a basis for determining whether they want to do any more investment on their own. And and, overwhelmingly, they decide to run off and do their own trials, do their own assessments, and and, take their own perspective.

51:27 They all have different requirements, and they all have a different approach to answering their question. The simple question being, is this a product we want in our portfolio? So these things can take a while. What I will say is we're not moving backward. We're always moving forward with these things. And so the lesson that I take from this is to be very clear and very transparent when we communicate about how long these things may take. So we recognize, appreciate and respect that investors and shareholders want to know how quickly things are going to happen. And I think, you know, frankly speaking, we just need to be as clear as we possibly can, perhaps emphasizing how there is uncertainty around these timelines. What I will say absolutely is all these opportunities are still in progress, including the insecticide.

52:18 And in fact, I'm more encouraged than I have been in a very long time about the success we're likely to see with the insecticide. We continue to see excellent results in the field. We continue to receive even inbound inquiries about this this product. And so these things will happen in due course. How long will they take? Well, we do our very best to minimize the timelines. The next question is actually about delays in regulatory. So the question is directed toward powder mildew and ECOVAX delays. What I should say very quickly is using the word delay when it comes to regulatory, it might not be the best word. The reality of the situation is that there are regulatory guidelines that are given by the regulators, which will say effectively registration of a new plant protection product will take eighteen months or twenty four months. Sorry.

53:17 It very much depends upon the jurisdiction that you're talking to. And what I would say is that in almost all but one experience, the regulators do not work to the timelines. There are a whole bunch of reasons for that, but they they don't give us reasons. You know, it is sort of it is what it is if if you will. You have to be willing to accept that or go the legal route. And we don't find that to be particularly productive. We we find the best way to approach regulatory is to work in partnership with regulators, to provide them what they ask for, to address their questions, to always be prepared to answer any questions in as quickly as humanly possible. And so, you know, we endeavor to do that.

54:05 With that said, I think that is probably as much as I can say. We continue to expect the Danil Nadeau authorization in France, hopefully very, very soon. If not very, very soon, then very soon. And in terms of EcoVelix, again, I think I've elaborated a little bit more on that. And there is also a question here about EcoVelix in Italy. Do you wanna tackle that one? Yes. So was emergency permission and sales related stuff. EcoVelix, immediately assumed in the full year forecast. So yes to an extent is the answer, and we're, you know, confident that we as I mentioned, the submission has now been made. Obviously, we got the authorization over the past couple of years, but we have we always weight these forecasts by risk. And so we put a reasonable number in there, but nothing over the top.

55:00 Okay. Is he making any progress on housing the third party active ingredients to sustain? I would say with a measure of caution, we have not prioritized sustained activities or opportunities in the recent, let's call it six to twelve months. That has primarily been down to resource allocation, focusing our resource on new first party products. Our experience with third party products has been slightly challenging in the sense that because of the dynamic regulatory landscape, particularly in Europe, we have had a number of occasions where work to encapsulate a specific active substance has ultimately been successful technically, but commercially has proven unviable nonviable due to regulatory action. So I'll give you a really good example.

56:01 We had done a project around chlorothalonil and our ability to microencapsulate chlorothalonil, which we demonstrated, and we demonstrated a product with really good biological activity. And as that project was running, chlorothalonil was not renewed in Europe, and so the commercial opportunity goes away. The unfortunate bit is getting insight into future regulatory action can be a little bit fraught with with peril. And so we deemphasize sustain for the for the time being. I do wanna reemphasize that sustain is and remains a very important part of our portfolio. We still see significant opportunity in that area. We will look for and we continue to look for opportunities to dedicate Apple resource or adequate resource anyway to that potential part of the business.

56:54 Sustain continues to be an important part of our technology platform. And even though I mentioned that the insecticide does not rely on the use of Sustain, What I will highlight is that it is a part of our subsequent product development portfolio. So just take that for what you will. So the next one that we've already got a few minutes left, so we'll fly through these as much as we can. At some point, we said that we would have annual revenues of 135,000,000 per annum, so that's the slide that I went through earlier. Based on the global forecast of existing products and two new solutions, how would other third party companies look at us and value us and our revenue prospects. I mean, yeah, of course, we are absolutely well aware of and of all of the major players in the industry and they are well aware of us. We work closely with them. Some of them are our current partners and some of them maybe our partners in due course. So I think that they understand that we are a a real player in the industry. They absolutely like our products. They understand where we're going.

57:59 I think that they are they absolutely have interest in us and our products generally. I think that's probably what we can say. Yeah. Okay. Great. And, you know, I'm taking one final question. Apologies in the interest of time because I think I can do this one quickly. Is he working with Cortez to expand the seed treatment opportunities and how far along are we? Well, I can't say how far along we are. It is right to say that we are looking at new opportunities for EcoVelix itself. So new target new target crops and even new target effects. That work is ongoing. I I should be really clear. Both the Corteva team and the EDEN team right now are job number one is the the birth, if you will, of the EcoVelix. So security authorization for the product and its successful commercial launch.

58:50 We are working through issues related to commercial scale production. The focus is very much there. It's getting all the pieces in place that we can launch the product on a commercial basis on a grand scale, by the way, as soon as we have that authorization. So it is all has the will in that respect. Everything else is is sort of for future. There are significant opportunities in Sunflower to mention mention one. But the core focus of that KTP that I mentioned to you earlier with Royal Holloway is looking at further opportunities outside of that. So I'm happy to to highlight those points. And with that said, I think we wrap up the q and a section and turn it back over to Alessandro. That's great. Well, thank you very much for answering the questions from investors. Of course, the company can view all the questions that have been submitted today and we will publish your responses on the IMC platform.

59:41 But just before redirecting investors, provide you their feedback, which is particularly important to you both. Sean, could I just ask you for a few closing comments? Yeah, Thank you. Well, again, thank you for joining us today. Thanks for those that have followed the story and many of you have followed for a good long time and welcome to those who are new to the story. Please let me assure you that the results that we presented today are not necessarily those that we're particularly proud of. I will say that the team is very focused on commercial growth. And we share your potential disappointment with the numbers for the first half. Hopefully, we've done a good job of explaining exactly why it is that we are where we are and that there is not a fundamental change in the business. In fact, this very much a timing related issue.

1:00:30 And part of the peculiarities of the crop protection business, which is extremely seasonal, extremely cyclical. And with the portfolio that we even today still have, still potentially susceptible to ebbs and flows and growing conditions and how those might affect our revenue over a given period of time. Hopefully, you'll see that we've done an awful lot to further diversify the portfolio to reduce our exposure to those kinds of situations. And for the future to build a portfolio of products that is truly valuable, not just to our customers, but to potential future partners and to shareholders alike. So thank you for coming on the journey with us. We are as enthusiastic as we've ever been, if not more so, frankly.

1:01:18 We're pleased to have the team that we have and we look forward to updating you in the future on further progress. That's great. Well, thank you both for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session? It should now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback and all the management team can better understand your views and expectations. Apart from the management team of EDEN RESEARCH PLC, we'd like to thank you attending today's meeting, and good afternoon to you all. Thank you.