Earnings call transcript: Burcon NutraScience Q2 2025 sees stock drop 15.79%

Burcon NutraScience Corporation's recent earnings call revealed ambitious growth plans amid volatile market conditions. According to InvestingPro subscribers can access comprehensive analysis, including 12 additional ProTips and detailed valuation metrics in the Pro Research Report.

Full transcript - Burcon NutraScience Corporation (BU) Q4 2025:

Conference Operator: Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Bercon Nutriscience Corporation Fiscal Year End twenty twenty five Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in listen only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. Please press 0 for the operator. Please be advised that this call is being recorded today Wednesday 06/25/2025.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Kip Underwood. Please go ahead.

Kip Underwood, CEO/Company Spokesperson, Bercon Nutriscience Corporation: Thank you, operator. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to those around the world on the call today. And thank you for attending our quarterly review. These are certainly exciting times at Bercon. We have strong customer interest, good progress at our manufacturing facility in Galesburg, Illinois, capital market momentum, certainly exciting times that we review with you all here today.

We'll start with our safe harbor statement. I'll let you all look at that for a few moments. So as I mentioned today, we'll go through recent milestones, a growing consumer market. We'll touch on our differentiated portfolio. Really the secret sauce that makes Percon what it is.

Exciting to again reiterate our direct route to market through our Galesburg manufacturing facility. Strong customer interest exhibited by our robust pipeline. And hopefully for those on the call today, what you see as a tremendous investment opportunity. And then in the end, obviously, will close for Q and A. We have made significant progress over the last three months.

So if we roll back to just prior to three months ago, we closed our rights offering fundraise at $9,400,000 We work with our alliance partner to acquire the manufacturing facility in Gaithersburg, again, giving Bercon a direct reach of market for our technology. We've announced the first commercial production of our pea protein, our Pizzazz seed pea protein, very exciting. Followed by part of our overall broader capital market strategy, executing a 20 to one share consolidation. And then recently announced that we've entered into a $6,800,000 multi year contract manufacturer agreement, a minimum of $1,400,000 per year. We're going to this more in the future, but certainly exciting for us.

It baseloads our facility and gives us a revenue stream from the very, very beginning. So very impactful last three months for Burkhart. We think it's important to start with the market. And we are certainly targeting a growing market. End consumers drive the activities of our customers.

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And end consumers are seeking proteins. In particular, they are seeking plant proteins. Consumers are seeking plant proteins both because they're healthier for them and they are healthier for our planet. Which means we as Burkhan are targeting a large growing market at the very beginning of its growth runway as more and more consumers transition from traditional proteins to plant proteins. That's important for us is that is where our technology is tremendously differentiated.

We a portfolio, sunflower, pea protein, canola protein. We've launched our hemp protein. These are proteins we've launched to the market where we upcycle, generally speaking, the bioplastic grain production to produce sure proteins with unmatched purity that fuels superior taste, superior color and functionality. That is important because as those customers I talked about seek to meet those new consumer needs, they need to meet their needs with a product that tastes great, that delivers the benefits of protein. And that is where Bercon's products deliver truly best in class protein production performance.

We have our market. We had the technology. The real unlock that occurred roughly three months ago was with our alliance partner acquiring the Galesburg, Illinois facility and giving Berkhan a direct route to market. It's tremendously exciting for us and where we have spent, frankly, a considerable amount of our time over the last three plus months. To remind everybody, we have full operational control.

The facility has the capability to produce our entire portfolio. The facility has the capacity for us to fully execute our business plan. It is a seven year agreement. Just tremendously exciting and I can vouch for, I myself personally as well as many members of our team have spent considerable time in Galesburg. One of the things that made this site perfect for us was the existing workforce allows us to scale and produce faster.

And I can say without a doubt that the integration of the team in Galesburg with the team from Bercon has truly been seamless. And we are truly working as one team now to produce Bercon's best in class proteins. The other key part of execution is sales. Customer interest has been phenomenal in products. They have been waiting patiently for us to deliver to them commercial scale samples.

Samples produced from the Galesburg facility. And then it's important because what you see here is our funnel. Our project funnel mirrors the customer decision timeline. That timeline is to launch a new consumer food is nine to eighteen months. We have many customers that are in the last step of that process.

And the last step of that process for them is to bring in and evaluate commercial scale production to ensure the technology performs at commercial scale both from us and in their manufacturing process. And we're excited to say we are at that last stage with many, many customers, particularly along pea protein where again we announced previously successful commercial scale production. I would also again like to highlight the $6,800,000 multi year agreement that we have. It is a contract manufacturing agreement. And a lot of people ask, well, how is that relevant?

What does that mean? So this is we are performing a service for somebody producing their ingredient for them. And it does really three things for us. First and foremost, it gives us a revenue stream, which is vitally important. It also helps us produce our own products.

I mean, simply put manufacturing facilities that run more often run better. So even the fact that we're doing this contract manufacturing, it helps us produce our products better. It helps us scale our technology. It helps us be more efficient. And helps us deliver more and better consistent quality.

So really exciting customer pipeline. Many commercial scale samples currently under evaluation in that last stage in the customer decision process and can't wait to communicate future news along these lines. We have the market target growing market. We have the technology. We have the ability to produce in a robust customer pipeline.

You put that together and we believe we have a tremendous investment opportunity both for our existing shareholders as well as new shareholders. So we are in phase one right now. We have communicated in the markets. We expect $1,123,000 of revenue in 2025. And as I've just went through, certainly very confident in that mark.

We have communicated double digit 10 plus million revenue in calendar twenty six and cash flow positive in counter '26 as well. We are in phase one right now. That is producing and selling execution phase. Phase two is where we will scale to the capacity of Galesburg. And then phase three is tremendously exciting.

It's where we look to scale the technology both ourselves for the growth as well as look to licensing partners around the world. Again, it's a tremendous investment opportunity we believe for the market out there. We're at the very beginning of this growth curve and really exciting for our investors to go along this journey with us. Looking ahead, the first thing I want to do is just look a little bit behind. It's very important to us to build our credibility.

Our phrases. We say what we do and we do what we say. And we communicated a series of actions that was going to happen in the first half of twenty twenty five. And we have met everything we communicated to the market. Looking forward, we expect in the second half of twenty twenty five production ramping up our additional products.

So the production of a sunflower, the production of canola protein, growing our sales. So communicating successful sales, successful customer supply contracts. That leads into 2026. Again, we have communicated 10 plus million in revenue for counter '26 and cash flow positive. These are certainly exciting times for us here at Bercon.

Again, the tremendous unlock with our partner ProMan Alliance to acquire the Galesburg facility and give us a path to bring our product, to bring our technologies to market. Robust customer pipeline customers who are wanting to buy in the late stage evaluation process. And we certainly believe that the future is bright for Bercon and are excited for aspiring investors to come along this journey with us. Operator? Kyle, this is Kip.

I believe we're ready for the Q and A session. We have several questions.

Conference Operator: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Sorry. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star followed by the one on your touch phone.

You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by the two. And if you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment please for your first question. Your first question comes from Dave Storms.

Please go ahead.

Dave Storms, Analyst: Just wanted to start with the grab bag around revenue guidance. Just curious, does this include any additional wins on the horizon or any royalty revenues they might see or is all that baked in? And then maybe additionally, is there any commentary around the pacing of that ramp of revenue?

Kip Underwood, CEO/Company Spokesperson, Bercon Nutriscience Corporation: Thanks, Dave. So near term revenue would be driven by the future sale of our products. So almost entirely, I mean, the licensing conversations are always there. The key part of our strategy to get the real value of a license is to establish the price points and the customer demand in the marketplace before we go there. So for us again we've started production, completed commercial scale production of P.

We'll be rolling that out to our other products. And then we expect those late stage customer projects I mentioned to turn into significant sales here for us in the back half of twenty twenty five. Again, the communicated number of 1,000,000 to 3,000,000.

Dave Storms, Analyst: And then with now that Galesburg is up and running, I'm sure you have a little more visibility into how everything is moving through and included on your P and L. Any thoughts around what a margin profile at a stable run rate would look like once you're in full capacity?

Kip Underwood, CEO/Company Spokesperson, Bercon Nutriscience Corporation: Well, what we've communicated is when we get to full scale capacity, we have gross margins north of 50% once we drive the capacity utilization. What I can say, what we've learned also over the last three months is having personally spent significant amount of time there is if anything on the ground level, we have full confidence that we can achieve the underlying financial assumptions, cost assumptions we have in our model. And if anything, we believe as we look under the hood, there's additional opportunity for us in the future.

Dave Storms, Analyst: That's very exciting. Thank you. And then just kind of switching gears here. Now that you have done the consolidation, any thoughts on next priorities for your capital structure?

Kip Underwood, CEO/Company Spokesperson, Bercon Nutriscience Corporation: I think for us, again, we have a balance sheet that allows us to execute our plan. And I think we're really going to be focused on the basics of producing high quality product, turning that into sales with our customers, driving our top line, and then communicating that to the market so that the markets can then see our robust financial performance. So we feel pretty good about those. And then obviously are wrapped around the cap marks. We'll see a more robust communication strategy around that to be sure that we're getting the credit in markets for the business achievements that we're making.

Dave Storms, Analyst: Understood. That makes a lot of sense. Last one for me here, more of a modeling question. It looks like you have a cash burn rate of about 1,000,000 to $2,000,000 per quarter. This seems sustainable given your current cash position and assumption that you'll be cash flow positive by 2026.

Does this seem reasonable to you? And then additionally, do you have the shares outstanding number for year end?

Kip Underwood, CEO/Company Spokesperson, Bercon Nutriscience Corporation: Yes, that's reasonable. Again, us moving to cash flow positive state is around ramping revenue really back half of this year going into next year. Strong underpinning of that again is the contract manufacturer piece we already announced of $1,400,000 per year minimum. Outstanding shares right now today, we can get you the exact number, but 12,700,000.0

Dave Storms, Analyst: That's perfect. Thank you for the time and good luck in next quarter.

Kip Underwood, CEO/Company Spokesperson, Bercon Nutriscience Corporation: Thanks, Dave. Appreciate it.

Conference Operator: Your next question comes from Bill Gabreth, private investor.

Bill Gabreth, Private Investor: Good afternoon. Can you hear me?

Kip Underwood, CEO/Company Spokesperson, Bercon Nutriscience Corporation: Yes, Bill. I can.

Bill Gabreth, Private Investor: Great. Thanks very much. Last November, you, announced, in a news release collaboration with Piratos in in Belgium. And I'm just wondering, can you comment on the status of that collaboration? And is there a prospect sales with Puratos?

Kip Underwood, CEO/Company Spokesperson, Bercon Nutriscience Corporation: So what I can say is that collaboration is ongoing. That collaboration was really centered around the use of our canola protein into baking. One of the avenues for that is the use of canola protein to replace egg protein and baking goods. So think about if you bake a cake, add an egg. At a commercial level people add eggs for the same reason.

Eggs are highly volatile from a price perspective and are those who want a more plant based offering and goods. And we're seeing real traction in the marketplace with our canola protein as a potential egg replacement or the enabling of a plant based positioning on a base good. And all of that really is underpinned by our work with pros.

Dave Storms, Analyst: Okay. Thank you.

Kip Underwood, CEO/Company Spokesperson, Bercon Nutriscience Corporation: Thanks, Bill.

Conference Operator: Okay, so as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press 1. Okay, so if there are no further questions at this time I will now turn the call over to Paul Lamb, Director of Investor Relations. Please continue.

Paul Lamb, Director of Investor Relations, Bercon Nutriscience Corporation: Thanks, operator. We have a question from our webcast. This is from Michael McKellishan. Has any consideration been given to acquiring the Bercom process equipment from the old Merritt plant as it appears the building is going to be repurposed? Kip, any comments on that?

Kip Underwood, CEO/Company Spokesperson, Bercon Nutriscience Corporation: Sure. So yes, we are aware of that. And looking into the future, one of the reasons, many reasons long term we're very excited about the Galesburg site is that we have the land and the building to allow us to increase capacity in the future in a very capital efficient manner. And certainly as we look forward to doing that, we will be looking where there may be a good deal on equipment that fits our process. Certainly we're well aware of the situation and I'm looking at what's available.

Paul Lamb, Director of Investor Relations, Bercon Nutriscience Corporation: Okay, so far there aren't any further questions. If anyone else wants to ask a question, type in the questions and we can answer them. Okay, I think we're good. Operator, please.

Conference Operator: All right, ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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