Eden Research (LSE:EDEN) — Investor Update - February 2025

0:01 Good morning, and welcome to the EDEN RESEARCH PLC Investor Update. Throughout this recorded update, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged, and 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 receives in the meeting itself. However, the company can review 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 over to CEO, Sean Smith. Good morning to you, sir.

0:32 Good morning, and thank you, Alessandro. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. You see we have a very nice full list of attendees, which is fantastic. We wanted to take the opportunity to expand a little bit upon the recent trading update and to expand a little bit on some recent movement in terms of the shareholder register. So we'll go through the presentation, provide a very high level summary of the company and recent activities, delve into a few details and open it up for questions, which we have already received a good number of. So thank you for those. Moving right along, I will introduce myself and apologies to those of you who have followed the company for some years. You've heard this before, but we'll expand a little bit on it. My name is Sean Smith. I'm CEO. I've been appointed as CEO a bit more than ten years ago now.

1:20 I've spent the vast majority of my career in the chemical industry, primarily working with a good number of blue chip companies such as what is now BASF, Honeywell and a few others, including Shell, always in commercial roles. And again, I joined EDEN ten years ago. Since that time, the business has really transformed. We've moved from a company with no registered products and no real revenue to speak of to a company who is anticipated to do roughly $5,000,000 this year in terms of turnover. And with the company profile with two products that have already been commercialized and a very strong pipeline of development products, which you'll see next. And I'm Alex Abraham, the CFO. I've been with EDEN even longer. So just over fourteen years now, I have an audit background.

2:09 I then went to venture capital and all the investments that we're involved with was EDEN, and I got very interested in the business and joined full time in 2011. I led the admission of the company on AIM back in 2012, and I've overseen over the years various aspects in the business. So thank you again for attending.

2:29 Okay. Moving along and sort of starting at a very high level, just to give you some context for the company. We are actually today the only UK based end quoted company focused on sustainable pesticides for agriculture. There are a number of peer companies operating across the world. And of course, there are a number of major multinationals that are also participating in this space, largely speaking, through partnerships with companies such as EDEN. We're a company with two technology platforms and a growing portfolio of products, as I mentioned a little while ago. We have two fully commercialized products at the moment. We have a third product, which we'll talk about in a moment, which is currently being sold under an emergency authorization in one country.

3:16 And we are anticipating registration for that product this year, later this year. And in addition to that, we have a strong development pipeline, which we will update you on for the first time in some time fairly shortly. For us, for those who follow the story, you'll know that for those who don't, crop protection as an industry is an extremely highly regulated industry. And to make the point, one isn't allowed to apply a product to any crop for any reason without authorization. So not good enough just to have approval on grapes, for example, to treat one disease and then assume that you're able to treat many. In reality, for every new major disease you want to add to the label is very much akin to human therapeutics. One must go through the regulatory process, demonstrate the safety and efficacy of the product before receiving official approval to sell a product for that purpose.

4:11 One should always think about the what we call the label of the product, which is literally physically the label that's on the bottle that describes what that product is and what it can be used for and describe some of the guidelines for use, hazards, etcetera. That label effectively directly translates into what our addressable market is. And so that is really very important. When we first launched our very first product, MevaLoam, a number of years ago now, where you see this box that says crop uses, the number of crop uses was one. It was botrytis, which is a fungal pathogen that affects grapes and many other crops, and the target crop was grapes. So that number was one.

4:56 Hopefully, you'll see that we've been working very, very hard to expand the number of crop uses to today. That number exceeds 100 and that number is growing all the time. We're a company that's backed by strong IP portfolio, which includes more than 130 granted and or pending patents. But in addition to that, we have a number of supplementary protection certificates across Europe and in other territories. And in addition to that, we've got a very strong portfolio of data and registrations that support the use of our products. And I would say it's not an exaggeration to say that the regulatory submissions and authorizations that we have are at least, if not more important than the patents that we hold. For us, again, as I mentioned a moment ago, regulatory clearance is the enabler for us and it defines the pace with which we move and the size of the markets that we can address.

5:51 Our core business is based around two platform technologies, as I just mentioned a moment ago. First is a suite of three plant derived active ingredients that are referred to as terpenes, which is the general class of chemistry that they are. These are plant derived. They originate from plants as a part of their own immune system. And we take those three registered active ingredients and we formulate them in ways in which we're able to target very specific diseases and or pests in the products that we formulate. Today, we are very much focused on leveraging, fully leveraging those two platform technologies and the products that we have to grow our market share and to grow revenue.

6:40 What is it that's driving our business growth? Ultimately, it's consumer concerns over pesticides. As you'll fully appreciate, I'm sure, Pesticides are in the news far too often and it's normally not for good reasons or for positive reasons anyway. And yet, pesticides are an absolutely essential tool for farmers to be able to produce the foods that we rely on globally. Removing pesticides from the market means that we all want to get used to having far fewer varieties of crops available to us and for the cost of food to increase dramatically as land use needs to be dedicated more fully to agriculture. Ultimately, governments around the world, politicians and policymakers are very concerned about consumer concerns over pest icide residues. And as a consequence, there has been an unprecedented level of regulation in our industry, not just in Europe, but around the world, which is driving regulatory.

7:41 So as I possibly you've heard me say before, if you follow the story, regulatory is a double edged sword for us. While it restricts the time or extends the time with which it takes us to get new products into market and to expand the markets in which we're operating, it also creates some very significant opportunities for us. And it's correct to say that most of the commercial opportunities that we're pursuing today were created because of the removal of a conventional pesticide from the market. And that trend continues, and in fact, I'd say to you, it's actually accelerating. So moving along and giving a little bit of additional detail on our product pipeline, which we're asked about quite often, and we quite often don't get a lot of detail around it.

8:31 I'll give you an overview of where we stand, both from a product perspective, what that product is intended to do, give you a bit of an illustration of the market and then to update you on where we stand. I think this slide is fairly self explanatory, but Mevalon just for consistency sake is a fungicide that was originally developed again for one disease on one crop. And then today, we have expanded its use to include a very long list of new diseases and new crops, which means ultimately that our addressable market has grown. Here you see that we're in what we call a late development stage. And late development stage simply means that our focus is on taking that product and expanding its use and managing its growth over time into new territories, new uses, etcetera, and by the way, through new partnerships.

9:21 Here you see an example of just a few of our key partners. So Cifcam Oxen, who also happens to be a strategic investor, is today still our largest commercial product for Mevalon. They are a key partner for us, and we work with them collaboratively on new developments. And we always consider partnership with them in an expanded list of territories. Corteva is the world's largest agriscience pure play. We'll give you a bit of detail about each of these partners a bit later. And K and E might be a name that you don't recognize, but they are the industry leader in Greece and a number of the Baltic States for the distribution of professional plant protection products. Are an outstanding partner and they are very, very strong regionally. The next product is Cedros. This is a product that targets nematodes, which are microscopic parasites that affect a very wide range of crops, both high value crops, fruits and vegetables and even a number of broad acre crops.

10:14 Here we've partnered almost exclusively with Eastern Chemical to bring that product to market. And we are continuing to collaborate with them very actively to expand the uses and the territories in which that product is being sold today. And I'm pleased to say that we're seeing a very nice return to growth through that product. EcoVelix is our third product, which currently is being sold under an emergency use authorization in one country, but we are anticipating authorization for that product across Europe later this year, all subject to the pace of regulatory process and to the vagaries that are included therein. Here we have developed this product exclusively with Corteva, where we are focused on repelling birds from maize seed.

11:00 And you might remember scarecrows were developed for a reason and this is effectively a biochemical scarecrow in effect. Ultimately, what we're trying to do is improve farmers yields by reducing bird damage and EcoVelix does an outstanding job of that. The next product in the portfolio, which is under negotiation at the moment with a range of potential commercial partners, is our fourth product in the portfolio. This is an insecticide based on the existing chemistry that we have. This insecticide targets a class of very important insect pests, which are called sucking pests. You can see a list of them here. Again, we're targeting a very broad range of fruits and vegetables. And again, we're in discussions with a good number of potential commercial partners to take that product and to advance it all the way through the regulatory process and into commercial launch in the not too terribly distant future.

12:00 Next is fungicide two, which must admit, we're not the most creative when it comes to naming these, but I think this says what it is. So it should be fairly clear. This is a new fungicide product that has a very different activity profile. And here, at least in the initial instance, we're targeting late blight on potatoes, but there are some additional targets that are available to us with this type of product as well. We are going through the development stage at the moment. However, we are, as we often do, in fact, would say as we always do, already engaging with potential industry partners with this product. This product is being screened by a number of potential partners. We're in the early stages of that process, and we hope to have more to say to that as soon as we find it. And then, of course, insecticide too.

12:51 And one might wonder, well, we're still not quite out of the gate yet with insecticide one, why focus on something else? Well, with all of these products, as is the case with all pesticides and in a very similar fashion to human therapeutics. When one develops a product, it has a range of activity and it will not include some important pest targets. In this particular instance, we're targeting lepidoptera, where insecticide one does not really have adequate efficacy. However, the R and D team here at EDEN in South Oxfordshire have been very busy to develop very good and effective products targeting lepidoptera. It's really important to highlight here the reason that we're engaged in all of these development programs is because there are substantial commercial opportunities attached to each of these. And although you may not have heard of Lepidoptera, a simple way to think about them is if you're familiar with malts.

13:49 Malts are a major, major pest for growers, particularly on a good number of high value fruits and vegetables. And at the moment, in a very similar fashion to many of these other products, are fewer and fewer good conventional chemistry alternatives to tackle that very important pass for high value crops. So just to give a bit of financial context around the development road map. So we concentrate now the first four of those products, Metallones, Cedros, EcoVelix, and Insecticide. What we're showing here is the potential the potential revenue for each of those products. So we've initially concentrated on The EU and The US in particular. But obviously there are opportunities outside just those two geographical areas.

14:35 But with melohin for example, for its initial use of detritus on a variety of different crops, we look at around €3,000,000 peak sales in The EU and around the same in The US, therefore six in total. But globally it's around €15,000,000 opportunity. With Downy Mildew which is the label extension which Sean has referred to earlier and which we've talked about previously, that in itself is around €8,000,000 for the EU peak sales for us. And generally peak sales occur around three years from launch of product. That can vary product by product and depending on market circumstances. So for example, with EcoBellix, because of the market dynamics, because of the incumbent product is looking to be banned throughout Europe and and indeed has already been banned. If they had to be able to secure emergency use authorization there the past two years, then it means you can get to peak sales sooner.

15:31 But overall, if we go down product by product, mevalon metritis around 15, for Downhill d 38 globally, there is an opportunity in The US but we haven't yet applied for that. Cedros is similar to Netherland overall around €15,000,000. Ecobellus, the seed treatment so bird repellency globally is around 34,000,000. And the insecticide is a huge opportunity for us. This one is obviously further behind these other products but it is a big opportunity in itself. So if you add up The EU and US you get to around €39,000,000 So those are the ones that are sort of nearer term but ultimately we would expect sales of around EUR135 million for these four products.

16:18 So to talk a little bit about some of our key partners here, which we've already mentioned and give you a sense of the profile. Just to remind you, EDEN's approach to the market is through partnerships. We don't have boots on the ground in any country other than The UK at the moment, and there is no intention to do so. Selling crop protection products is a fairly heavy lifting effort. We need an army effectively of professional crop advisors, agronomists, salespeople, etcetera, to support the growth of of these products. And so we've partnered with people that have exactly that. So in each of these instances, these companies that you see listed here, and a good number of others, by the way, are our eyes and ears and boots on the ground in each of the countries in which we're operating. So for example, with the Corteva that we've mentioned already, we actually have two partners two products that are in partnership with them. One is a product called Asseva, which is a version of mevalon that's being sold in France initially to treat the tryouts, as we've mentioned already, in the hopefully not too distant future to treat a broader range of disease targets as well.

17:36 Corteva is promoting the product, building demand, very much focused on the marketing story, the sales story and ultimately education of the market to realize our opportunity. Working with Citamoxen, we've seen exactly the same thing. They are our eyes, our ears, our boots on the ground and they've done an absolutely outstanding job of developing the business in Italy and an increasingly long list of countries across the world. And Eastern Chemical is our partner for Cerros, which is the Nevada side. They're a U. S.-based multinational who has an emerging crop protection business. And ultimately, they've got the bandwidth and the horsepower to register centers in a very normal list of countries and bring the product to market as we have been doing with them for a number of years now.

18:29 Market adoption and regulatory overview. One of the things that we want to touch on and part of the story that often when speaking to investors we ignore really in our frankly, is we want to give people an understanding of why these products are being used. It's not good enough just to know that, okay, there's a big demand now and growing demand for biopesticides and that's the future of our industry. We're going to move away ultimately for conventional chemistry. We're to minimize the use of conventional chemistry and we're to move toward biopesticides. Why would somebody buy methylene? I mean, yes, we're nice and we're hopefully pleasant to deal with. But the reality of the situation is farmers don't buy products because of those reasons. They buy products because they work. And ultimately, the focus of all of our product development efforts today, as in the past, is in developing effective products that are easy to compete with in the marketplace.

19:32 We are literally just coming off the back of a day and a half long Mevalon product seminar. In fact, our first ever in person product seminar that we have held in Southern Spain, where we have an opportunity to meet with about 40 individuals from literally all over the world as far away as New Zealand, Australia, Morocco, The U. S, Mexico and of course, all across Europe to talk about mevalon and its benefits. And we've had presentations from a very long list of our commercial partners talking about mevalon and why it is so good and the success they've had is really quite exciting to come off the back of that with a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of shared best practice across our group of commercial partners.

20:19 And I'd say it's right to say there's a very, very high level of enthusiasm about the product itself. Again, farmers don't buy products that don't work. They and by the way, plant protection products are one of the very greatest input costs in in order to be efficient in what they're doing. And the long and short of it is that our products work and that is our focus in bringing products to the market that have a high level of efficacy and develop a very strong reputation, which I'm very pleased to say we have done with Medline centers and ultimately we will do again with EcoVox. So it's probably better for you to hear this directly from the mouths of our customers, ultimately the growers who buy the products from our commercial partners.

21:10 The following two testimonials might appear a little odd. I just want to say that from the beginning. These have been edited with AI to basically translate from Spanish into English. So there's some strange artifacts that happened, but these are verbatim, their quotes, the way, interestingly, in their own voices telling them why they like Medallo or Aral, as they referred to it, and giving it a perspective of not only greenhouse growers, but also vineyard operators that are associated with a very prestigious one. So Alessandro, with that said, would you mind moving on to the first video, please? We are here at the Pina Fidelis winery with Javier Ruiz, the technician in charge of the vineyards here at Pina Fidelis.

21:57 Last year was quite a rainy year with a lot of botrytis problems and where the Arau official intervened in the vineyards. Last year in September, there were a lot of rains, and it's a very dangerous situation for botrytis. So the advantage that Ara will provide us is protection against arthritis. It is a short period of safety, and we have found that it works. And people are very satisfied with how it works. So and the grapes. We know that they depreciate a lot when they have detritus, so we've managed to prevent that from happening. To the people very soon, it has been an investment. I use Arau for controlling powdery mildew and botrytis. Arau gives me greater effectiveness compared to other products I've tried before. It works. I've tried other products, but they didn't work for me.

22:47 Besides controlling the ash, I can prevent it from appearing on the plant, symptom of rot. I had powdery mildew, there and was no way to control it until I started using it. With Arau and the first two applications, it was controlled 100%. In two to three days, I see the first results. And I notice it very quickly, the focus of powdery mildew is cut off radically. It can be used in ecology, in organic farming. Respect for beneficial insects. It doesn't harden the plant like other products I've used before. Botritis, well, I haven't had any. One advantage is that if you're treating, you prevent botrytis and also ash. So you're killing two birds with one stone. And this year, we'll continue with ARAU for botrytis and ash. Great. Thanks, Alessandra.

23:33 As I said, it's better to hear from the mouths of the folks that are actually using our products. And yeah, so hopefully that helps explain a little bit about the success and the growth and market share that we're seeing with Aral in Spain. So now just a bit on the financials, Sean mentioned about how we put out a trading update at beginning the of the year, so this is just to reiterate some of those key points. So we saw a good increase in revenue compared to 2023, an increase of 34% overall. But importantly, product sales increased by 38% year on year, so we were pleased pleased with that result. In terms of the forecast for 2025, we expect to see a further increase in revenue overall up to 5,000,000 and product sales increasing by another million up to 4.6.

24:20 There is a slight caveat to that in that there's potential other upside over and above the 5,000,000 of revenue that we forecast. For example, we have our insecticide product which we've already mentioned we're negotiating with various partners at the moment. So it's possible that we may see some upfront payments as part of that negotiation and we shall know more in the not too distant future. Also, we are expecting approval of for the label extension in Downey Mildew and and subject to regulatory timing that could see us see additional sales this year. And then also as we've already mentioned, with ECA Bellix we've got the full EU approval expected later this year. Again, very much on the timing of that, it's possible that we could see upside sales there as well. So we believe that there is good upside, but it is all subject to either negotiation and or more importantly regulatory approval. So remains to be seen. But in any event and even without that, we've got a good increase in product sales in particular compared to 2024.

25:24 In terms of the cash, as we've said in the trading update, we don't currently expect to need to raise additional funds for our existing working capital. As we're very clear, what we mean by that is we are executing the business plan that we put forward back in the middle of twenty twenty three when we did our last fundraise. We would be only looking to raise additional funds if we were to come across for an example an acquisition that was of interest and the shareholders agreed was interesting and or we found certain standalone projects that we felt were worth funding and again that align with shareholders interests. But in terms of the current business plan, we do not need to raise additional capital. And then just a bit on the direct shareholdings and part of this I'm sorry, institutional and direct shareholdings and part of this is to get across a few messages. One is that we have a good shareholder register.

26:20 We've already mentioned that Sitcom is our strategic shareholder in all of this as well as commercial partners, very important. But also we have a nice impression, Octopus, Canaccord, Unicorn, Rathbose, Marty, and Jane Finn. So a really good shareholder base and really supportive shareholder base which is important for a company like ours. Recently, the directors have bought in the market, so four of us bought at the end of January and very early February. So hopefully that sends the message that we are all very much behind the company and really do believe in what we're doing. And yeah. So overall, the directors now have just around 2% or so of the company. And also the the final point was to say that we have been well aware of as I suspect a number of you have as well. There's been a a seller in the market for around eighteen months now and I'm very pleased to say that they have now finally been taken out completely.

27:19 So that overhang that has existed in the market for a long time has now gone. So hopefully that means that we can see upside rather than downward pressure. So moving along and giving an illustration of some product potential and without spending the time to go into each and every product, we'll focus a little bit upon EcoVelix. To remind you, EcoVelix is a seed treatment product that was developed with Corteva over the course of last roughly five years in order to treat maize seed to prevent bird damage. For those of you that don't know, birds are a major pest for maize growers. They particularly like maize seed, and they can cause very significant crop yield losses, in fact, in excess of even 50%, even we've seen much higher than that if there is a strong bird presence.

28:15 There have been two incumbent products at the time we started this development, and it was known at the time that both were under severe regulatory pressure. The first of those has been removed from the market already, and the second one is in the process of being removed from the European market. Regulatory activities driving the removal of these products and and it's primarily been because of their tox and eco tox profiles, not not really their efficacy, which has been good. But in reality, the fact that they have less than ideal profiles from an environment or from a user safety perspective. Working with Orteva, we've developed this product here in our laboratories in South Oxfordshire with the team that we have in place.

29:03 We've been very successful in bringing that product from proof of concept to on the verge of commercial launch within five years. And again, we've ultimately used the proceeds of our 2020 fundraise to support us in doing so along with the collaborative partnership that we have with Corteva, which has been extremely productive. The long and short of it is that the opportunity here is, as you see described, we see the potential for the product ultimately to be well, initially to be approximately EUR €3,600,000 growing to ultimately potentially depending upon regulatory action as much as about €34,000,000 over time. As with the case with many of our products, most of our products, regulatory action not only controls the pace, but it controls the size of the market and ultimately it controls the size of the global market.

30:05 So the ultimate potential for EcoBiox is much larger as the same incumbency treatment products are removed from the market in other territories. But from the onset, we see the overall addressable market being $3,600,000 in the first well, it would be by year three ultimately, and then ultimately growing as regulatory action unfolds. And so to wrap things up and to pull it all together for you, EDEN is a company that is focused on sustainable chemistry for professional agriculture and horticultural uses. We have a history and particularly recent history of very strong revenue growth. We have been very focused on building our capabilities and our list of partnerships over the past years.

30:54 And we're very pleased with the progress that we've made there. But there is a lot more work to be done. And we'll get into a little bit of some of the opportunities in the Q and A process. But the long and short of it is we're a company with no shortage of opportunities in front of us. And we've been very selective in where we focus the effort and dedication we put behind each of those products. And I'm pleased to say that we are making good progress and we expect to continue to do so for this foreseeable future, of course, always dependent upon the pace of regulatory action. You. Sean, Alex, thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do submit your questions and you can do so just by using the Q and A tab that's situated on the top right hand corner of your screen. But just while the company take a few moments through the questions that have been submitted today, I'd like to remind you the recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A can be accessed via your investor dashboard.

31:52 As you can see, we have received a number of questions both pre submitted and throughout today's live presentation. And if I could just hand back to you to read out those questions, that'd be great and I'll pick up from you at the end. Great. So the first one is Sure. So from the top, your annual reports are very detailed, yet you don't break down sales by product or region, volume or value. Why is this? We do appreciate that this would be extremely interesting reading and we find it interesting to see how things are going. Our view on it, this is that we don't have this very commercially sensitive information and we don't wanna give away to our potential or existing competitors as to exactly what's going on by region or by volume or value. It can we find we would find that use information really useful if our were doing the same, which they generally don't.

32:40 It would allow us to, for example, enter or look to enter into a market where some of these sales have dropped off if that were to be the case. So we just feel that it's too much information and certainly at this stage of development of the company. But we'll continue to review that and we do try and get as much information as possible and hopefully you've noted that over the past few years that we've tried to give more information certainly in terms of the forecasts and the potential of the company and its revenue streams. I will say that in addition to that, as the revenue continues to grow, the portfolio continues to grow, one might expect us to give a bit more detail around all these things when the exposure of some of those information isn't so commercially sensitive. And that will evolve over time as the portfolio grows, as revenue continues to grow, as our number of partnerships continue to grow. So right now, the short answer is it's around commercial sensitivity.

33:36 We want to be smart about what information we disclose that could be useful to our competitors. At the same time, we want to help you understand as much as we can the size of the opportunity and how what progress we're making. And again, if you look at the top line, hopefully you're seeing that we are making progress and that there is certainly more to go. There's no doubt about that. And so next one, can you please rule out dilution? I think I've covered that one already for what I said in terms of not needing to raise funds unless there's a good aligned reason to do so. Okay. The next one is that on 07/27/2021, we announced an agreement with Civcam to distribute mevalon or RALP in four North African countries. Can we have an update? Yes, that's a great question. In fact, a number of the folks from those countries were just in attendance at the first ever in person METALETTA conference this week.

34:31 They're very enthused about the product. There's a lot of effort going into building demand, growing demonstration trials, etcetera. The answer to this question and some similar ones is that we're waiting for regulatory authorization. And yes, unfortunately none of us like it, but it takes time. We are so you know anticipating authorization for Mevlo in Morocco at least during the course of 2025. We can't assure you that that will happen, but we can tell you that we are optimistic

35:05 about it and the local distribution team is also optimistic about it. You may recall that relatively recently we had authorization for Cedros, our second product in Morocco. And I can tell you that the Moroccan market is very sophisticated, very fast moving. We're seeing strong interest in Cedros in Morocco. We absolutely expect to see the same in for Iran. And that applies to the other three North African countries as well. So stay tuned on that one. But the short answer is one, we don't like to get it, but unfortunately it is what it is, which is that regulatory controls the pace with which we can launch our products. The good news is we have very keen distribution partner in those countries ready to go, more of that ready to go.

35:52 So the next one, is the MH PLC deal dead and why no update on this despite four years having passed since that announcement? Yes, that's a great question. The relationship with PLC is not dead. That's absolutely true. But what you may recall is that this arrangement that we had between us was related to the development of one of their discoveries, which was that a plant extract, a whole plant extract derived from a basically a weed had some impact on potato blight. And after a considerable amount of work, a very nice and productive collaboration with POSCUSTS, we ultimately concluded as EDEN that our focus was going to be in developing products based on an alternative approach.

36:39 So unfortunately commercializing plant extracts in our industry is a slightly challenging game. In some respects, it's a little easier if you market the product as a biostimulant. However, we don't see that as the kind of commercial opportunity that we want to focus on. So no doubt that the basis for that collaboration was and remains an interesting commercial prospect and to remind you that's controlled late blight. But ultimately, working with plant extracts was not something that EDEN as EDEN wanted to focus upon. So hopefully that is understandable. And again, we very much enjoyed that collaboration with POSKIT. It's always excellent to work with growers directly.

37:26 It gives us a very good perspective on their interest. And indeed, PLC is an extremely innovative company doing really interesting stuff. And just from a relationship perspective, we're quite positive about that experience. Next question is, please can we have a progress update on banana and cannabis products? Yes, that's a good one. We have no shortage of opportunities in front of us in banana and cannabis and cocoa and canola or rape is are all massive opportunities sitting in front of us. Unfortunately, although we have grown the team somewhat, we still don't have the resource available to us to pursue all of these high value, high potential opportunities in parallel. So unfortunately, we're in a situation where we focus on these in sequence.

38:23 Rest assured, those remain interesting opportunities. And indeed, there is still work ongoing in both of those areas, particularly banana. But they're not working at the same pace that we've been working, for example, with EcoVelix and insecticide one and fungicide two. Those have been prioritized above these other opportunities while we gain more, let's say, proof of concept data around both of those in particular. And again, there's a very long list of other opportunities. In fact, I can't communicate clearly enough how during the course of the last day and a half, how many times I was asked by one of our distribution partners, have you tried Mevelo, for example, on cocoa or on you name the crop.

39:10 And all of them had stories about huge opportunities that were emerging due to regulatory pressure. So stay tuned on that one. The more resources we build, the more progress we make, the more we will continue to develop new opportunities to keep that pipeline full. And again, there's no shortage of opportunities in front of us. Next one, please can we have some information on Novelis Plus and what is the long term strategic aim? Will it replace Mevloem? Why the need for two similar products? That's a great question, in fact. And it's nice that get some questions around it. Nevelis Plus was developed with Cipcam as an evolution of Mevalon. And the long and short of it is that the list of crops, the efficacy, the product claims, etcetera, etcetera between Novelis plus and mevalon are absolutely identical.

40:04 And what it ultimately comes down to largely speaking is product positioning and also growing practice in a local country. So for Mexico, for example, and a few other Latin American countries, the Velas Plus will be the product that we lead with. Whereas in other territories, for example, North Africa, all of Europe, Australia and New Zealand, we've been focused primarily on Mevalon as the lead product. As each of these territories develops and evolves and as we begin the regulatory process in each working with CipCam, we'll make a decision about which formulation we approach. But keep in mind, the formulations are extremely similar. And again, their target crops and target diseases are identical.

40:52 So it's really more about commercial decision making, product positioning, growing practices, etcetera. Okay. Hopefully that's clear. Next question is, are you working on seed payments with companies other than court evidence? So when are we likely to hear news? The second question, can't really answer. It all very much depends upon the pace of progress in those discussions. The answer to the first question is yes, we are working with other folks on seed treatments. Are like with the foliar products, like with the soil applied products, in the seed products category, seed treatment products category, there is an almost endless aim or list of potential targets. And we are talking with folks other than Corteva. But to remind you, Corteva has been an outstanding partner in this area and we'll continue to look at new opportunities with them as well.

41:43 Next. The company had advised not too long ago that 2025 regulatory costs will be lower than that of 2024. Will the company therefore just confirm whether 2024 costs included regulatory costs for insecticide registrations in Europe and America. So, we have been spending some of our regulatory budget on the insecticide product product product and project to move that forward. So yes, it's the short answer. So that's one is a very good question about what's going on in France with the label extensions for mefloem where we intend to grow the addressable market quite substantially. First of all, I think the question is really directed at when is it going to be that you get authorization. And as some of you who followed the story for a while will know, it is an absolute fool's errand to guess the pace of regulatory action and to get very definitive timelines over when the regulator is going to decide to approve a product or otherwise.

42:43 The long and short of it is we are still anticipating that authorization imminently, but we can't give you a good idea as to when exactly it is that that's going to happen. Just to make one point, the regulatory process in The EU and The US and really everywhere is not getting easier. It is not getting faster. It is not getting cheaper. In fact, in all of those respects, it's going the other way. The hurdles are getting raised higher and higher all the time. The pace is slower and slower and the costs are greater and greater. This is very, very well known in our industry. We are not the only people facing this and nor are we the only company that is frustrated by this trend.

43:31 But it is what it is. And we always have to keep in mind that when we face these types of hurdles, all of our competitors do as well. The loser in all of this, unfortunately, for a period of time is the farmer, Whilst the industry struggles to fill holes created by the regulators in their treatment portfolios, we are working to fill those holes. And ultimately, again, is a double edged sword. So I wish I could give you a very definitive answer. I can't do so at the moment, but we are anticipating authorization in the foreseeable future subject again to decisions and the questions we may receive from regulators from time to time. And the next one, the share price is at 4p. Last year you commented in the Q and A that you believe the share price value was north of 20p.

44:22 With such big discounts value nearly one year on, what steps would you take to reassure the market of this value so that people can't and will buy even shares with confidence? Well, I think it's continue meeting targets. It's to continue to deliver all of the key milestones that we've set out and to deliver the business case that we've set out back in mid to late twenty twenty three, which we believe we are continuing to do. I think personally the market is generally in a better state. It's been an awful state. So I think we all appreciate the end market in particular over the last few years. It is now getting better. Are signs of recovery that we see when we visit our investors and potential investors. So I think life is getting a bit better and easier. Generally, it's still a fairly healthy slog, but I think we have lots of reasons to be cheerful and as long as we continue to deliver then, yeah, we haven't changed our opinion as to the fact that we are, I think we're aligned in our agreement that we are undervalued significantly.

45:25 Okay. Thank you. Question about the Trump administration, the impact on The U. S. If I could anticipate the actions of the Trump administration, I'd probably be incredibly wealthy. I'm not going to be the only person that is probably not able to give you an excellent and absolutely spot on forecast of what the administration is going to do. But I will say is, it's a little bit of a mixed picture. And to look at this positively, one of the things I'll say is that the administration seems to be very focused on the removal or the reining in of some regulations.

46:10 And we saw that in the first Trump administration. And that can have a positive impact or it could have a confusing or founding impact. We're going to have to wait and see how that all rolls out. We like the approach of less regulation. We like the approach of a more business forward, more business centric approach to things and a practical approach. But but again, we can't really anticipate ultimately what what this will lead to and how it will impact things. What I will say is that some of his appointments are very positive about greener approaches to agriculture and food security in general. And that's a very, very positive message.

46:57 How those administration members and their interests translate into policymaking is difficult to anticipate. But there are certainly some very positive terms coming out in terms of food safety, food security and potential risks associated with conventional pesticides. Okay. The next one is, have you made any progress since the last one around sugar bee pest icide development, please? Nothing specific to say about that at this particular point. What we do know is that our development on insecticide has good activity against aphids as a whole. Getting down into field based studies quite yet on sugar beet, we have not yet crossed that one off the list, but it remains an opportunity, it remains on that very long list of opportunities that we have.

47:54 Okay. There's a question here. Let's see. Is the growing organic market of any concern in the shrinking market for pesticides? And can you claim superiority similar to that of organic compared to conventional pesticides? So just to kind of get everybody on the same page, Our products are authorized for use in organic agriculture across Europe. And we are likely to be able to attain organic stays in numerous other countries around the world, but probably not all. Organic status is not one defined thing. It seems that every organic certifying body across Europe, North America, Central America, South America, Asia, they all have different approaches to defining what organic means. They all take very different views on certain things.

48:56 To give you an example, it doesn't always make a lot of sense. So copper is a product that has been or had been in any case allowed for use in organic agriculture. But, you know, copper is a heavy metal. It's persistent in the environment. It's bioaccumulative in some cases, and it's toxic. And yet, it has been authorized for use in organic agriculture. It's not always a sense it's not always something that seems like it fits common sense. So that's one point. Where we are authorized for use in organic agriculture, I would say that we are one of the strongest products available to growers who are growing organically. Our products do perform like conventional products.

49:42 They have that level of activity and that level of efficacy. And we've seen very strong support from organic farmers across Europe without a doubt. Do you want to go to the next one? Jonathan? Yeah. Whilst grateful for the effort and willingness to keep in touch with shareholders, I'd like to ask why we're having this presentation today. It seems like we've heard all this before. What have I missed today that's new? As we said in the start, this is partly off the back of the trading update that we put out a couple of weeks ago. It's partly to make the point that we have seen our seller which has been significant down pressure in the past eighteen months as I mentioned earlier that they are now gone. So that's the message we wanted to make sure that everybody had heard. Also, there'll be people on this call who we know there are people on this call who are new to the story.

50:36 So apologies if you have heard bits or some or most of this before, but we feel it's important to get the whole story out there so that those new potential investors get to fully understand exactly what it is that we're doing. Right. There's a question here about the insecticide commercialization and the exact timelines for that. And what I will say is that it is very difficult to anticipate the pace with which the insecticide product will be launched. And you'll appreciate there's a tremendous amount of work that goes into this. So keeping in mind that every crop that we intend to target, every insect pest that we intend to target, for each and every one of those, we need to have a complete dossier to demonstrate efficacy.

51:27 So that work has been going on for a number of years now. And as we've communicated already, we are in the midst of commercial discussions with a number of potential partners to bring that product forward. In some cases, the timeline for commercialization could be shortened. And in other cases, it may be a bit longer. The long and short of it is, no pun intended, I'm sorry for that. The long and short of it is, however, that our selection of commercial partner and our go to market strategy will really define the timing for the launch of that product. It is a bit more complicated than even that in that regulatory actions will define when we get the product to market and it is very difficult to anticipate those.

52:12 But we are very encouraged by the level of interest, the demand for this type of product, by the reception that product has had. Okay. And I don't know if there are any others that aren't replications of other questions that are out there. Just a second. We're trying to read through these. Give us one moment if you don't mind. What are the yeah. Okay. What are the technical differences between different products based on the same chemistries and formulation technologies? The answer to that question probably take me quite some time. But the reason that we have registered each of the active ingredients that we have is that each of them has a different activity profile.

53:09 And to give you some examples of what that looks like, For example, Thymol might target very effectively one particular fungal pathogen, whereas Eugenol would target a different fungal pathogen. We see that very clearly not only in the in vitro work that we do here in the laboratory, but also in field development work. So the reason that we have developed each of these terpenes is because ultimately of their different profile of activity. Now, if we get into the technical reasons for those, they're simply different molecules, although they all fit into the same category in that they are all terpenes. What I would tell you is ethanol is a very different product than isopropanol.

53:58 One of those, you're very Okay to drink. It can be very enjoyable. The other one is absolute poison. So just because tranyl, usual, and primal are all technically classified as terpenes or terpene alcohols, they have very different profiles of activity. And so to bring this all together by registering three different molecules, we are able to target a very broad range of different paths. I think that wraps it up. Perfect, Sean, Alex. Thank you very much for answering those questions from investors. And of course, the company can review all the questions submitted today, we will publish those responses out on the Investor Meet company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you their feedback, which is important to you both, Sean, could I just ask you for a few closing comments? Great. Yes, thank you very much. Well, first of all, thank you to everybody for attending today. And what we were really interested in doing is continuing our engagement with shareholders, providing as regular updates as we possibly can and giving some insight into the development portfolio that we have.

55:08 Key for us is that we continue to grow, that revenue continues to grow, that we where we can accelerate the pace of that growth as much as possible. What you hopefully will recognize is that we are still not a company with an infinite list of resource or cash available to us. So we're trying to be very selective and very efficient about bringing new products, new technologies and expanded uses of existing products to the market. We have an incredibly good network of commercial partners and we are continuing to make the most of that to the greatest extent possible. The one thing I wish I could share with you because it's hard to capture a bit is the sentiment, the positivity coming out of the day and a half long Mevalon conference from about 40 different individuals from all over the world who share a real enthusiasm for the product. And I think over the coming weeks or so, we will be looking to package some of those sentiments up, some of the shared experiences and sharing those with our investors. Investors. Because if you're able to see it from their perspective, you'll very clearly understand the potential for these products.

56:21 In the territories in which we have authorizations, where we have allowed uses, if one goes and visits a grower of one of the relevant crops, you will find a very strong level of support for the products and a really strong enthusiasm. We expect that to continue we make commercial progress globally. Sure. And, Alex, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session as you now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations? This phone take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of EDEN RESEARCH PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.

57:08 Thank you.