Peter R. Beetham
Thanks, Carlo, and good afternoon to everyone. I'd like to start today's call by recognizing that our team here at Cibus remains laser- focused on delivering our targeted near-term revenues. Our second quarter demonstrates continued execution toward our commercial objectives with clear progress across our focus programs in rice and partner-funded and/or supported sustainable ingredients, including biofragrances that are positioning Cibus to begin recognizing initial revenue in 2026. Every quarter, we are getting closer to that pivotal initial revenue moment through tangible commercial progress, which includes successful field trials, milestone achievements, regulatory clearances, and direct customer engagement. The path to revenue is really clear. Let me be even more specific about what we're building toward. Our rice herbicide tolerance traits, HT1 and HT3, alone represent over $200 million in potential annual royalty revenue across our initial target geographies in the United States and Latin America. These traits are progressing on schedule toward targeted initial launches in Latin America beginning in 2027 and expanding to the United States in 2028, which would generate initial royalty revenue and set the stage for further opportunities in the immense global rice feed market. This pursuit doesn't represent a distant aspiration. Rather, this is the reality of our near-term commercial opportunities. We believe we are developing a new industrial plant breeding platform. We have traits moving into the customer germplasm. We're seeing positive results in field trials, and we're witnessing an increasingly accepting global regulatory environment that's opening doors for customer engagement and market penetration opportunities that simply didn't exist before. As we advance towards revenue generation, we're taking a disciplined and strategic approach to capital allocation that maximizes our near-term commercial opportunities while preserving the significant value we've created across our broader trait portfolio. The streamlined operational focus we just announced in July concentrates our resources on our rice herbicide tolerance traits, partner- funded and/or supported sustainable ingredients programs, including biofragrances. These are our nearest-term revenue opportunity drivers with the clearest, most efficient path to market. This calibrated focus is designed to reduce our annual cash usage to approximately a net $30 million by 2026, extending our runway while positioning us to capture the significant revenue opportunity ahead of us. That said, we have invested substantial resources and expertise in developing a portfolio of opportunity pipeline traits and programs that includes highly valuable productivity traits across multiple crops. We are actively in pursuit of partner-funded projects for these traits until such time as our capital resources are sufficient to efficiently support more robust development efforts. I will now take a few moments to discuss our priority programs and recent regulatory progress before passing it over to Greg to discuss our opportunity pipeline traits and programs in more detail. Starting with our rice platform, which is our #1 priority pipeline trait and foundation for near-term revenue generation, we continue to make significant progress with trait integration, field trials, and registration activities, each of which is on track to meet our targeted commercial timelines. This quarter, we also achieved a key milestone by completing edits and delivering stacked traits containing our HT3 trait to a second U.S. partner. Our customer momentum continues to build significantly. Recently, we signed an agreement with Semilano, a Colombian-based Latin American rice seed company, marking our fifth customer in the Americas. The greater penetration of Latin America is particularly exciting, both with large and small participants, as these markets have historically lacked access to advanced weed management solutions in rice, representing a transformative opportunity for Cibus to drive value for farmers in these key regions with our gene-edited HT traits. What's driving this commercial interest is our standardized platform that enables us to edit customers' elite germ plasm and return it with specific traits in approximately 12 to 15 months. This represents a fundamental breakthrough that intersects with agriculture's important plant breeding programs, which, as I've said before, are the engine room of genetic innovation for the seed industry. Seed companies are coming to us because they recognize this creates a dependable model for trait development that is unlike anything the seed industry has seen before. This is the recognition that our rapid trait development system accelerates the adoption of gene-edited traits into their best genetics faster than modern trait integration. Field trial programs for rice are progressing as planned across our customer base, and we continue to advance trait registration activities that are essential for our Latin American launch target for 2027, 2028, and subsequent U.S. commercialization targeted for 2028. We also expect to initiate our first trait validation trials in Latin America later this year, with delivery of initial HT traits to Latin American customers anticipated by year-end. Our partner-funded and supported sustainable ingredients program continues to serve as a complementary near-term revenue opportunity driver. We remain on track for nominal revenues from our biofragrance products beginning later this year, with targeted commercial expansion ramping in 2026. This quarter, we successfully completed the first stage scale-up of 2 biofragrance products, supporting our expectations for realizing revenues from this program. The biofragrance program continues to meet development milestones and demonstrates the versatility of our core capabilities in creating value beyond our crop productivity traits. What's exciting about this area is the strong interest for bio-based products we're seeing from the consumer packaged goods industry. The industry is very interested in our ability to provide fragrances and other products that they previously had to source through either expensive natural processes or synthetics. We expect the revenue ramp to accelerate in this area over the next few years, providing a near-term offset to expenses as we advance our rice traits towards commercialization. Now shifting over to the regulatory front. We continue to see acceptance of gene editing technologies that is fundamentally changing the commercial landscape and the opportunity set for innovators such as Cibus. While the EU trialogue discussions have extended beyond their initial June 30 target this year, I want to emphasize that this process, while delayed, has not stalled, and customers remain engaged and excited about the opportunity that awaits. The trialogue is a highly iterative process, involving detailed committee work streams and negotiations among individual member countries, the parliament, and the commission. These discussions are actively progressing, and we believe resolution will occur within the next 6 months. When completed, this will represent an incredible moment for our industry, one in which Cibus is uniquely positioned to benefit from due to our positive regulatory track record and commercial-ready traits. The transition from Polish to Danish EU Council presidency has brought fresh momentum, with Danish officials having clear visibility on the specific outstanding items requiring resolution. This regulatory advancement, combined with our recent positive determination in Ecuador, ongoing approvals across North and South America, and continued regulatory clarity in India and parts of Asia, is creating a foundation to market our traits globally. These regulatory developments across multiple geographies significantly strengthen the commercial opportunity for our trait pipeline and serve as important catalysts for our business. And with that, I will now pass the call over to Greg to discuss our opportunity pipeline traits and programs. Greg?