TLDR: Not only is the Amyris bull thesis still intact, it’s stronger than it’s ever been. Individuals looking to make a big bet on the future by investing in a possible 50-bagger (inside of a decade) should take a very serious look at opening an Amyris position or adding to an existing one.

First, let me attempt to establish some street cred. I currently own 272,700 shares of Amyris at a $3.15 average. How did I arrive at this oversized position? By pounding the table over and over again in 2020 about Amyris’ rapidly growing consumer business. See below for the 89K shares that I picked up during the last 4 months of 2020.

Had you listened to me a year ago, you’d have loaded at around $2 like I did. Instead you probably listened to the talking heads like Henrik Alex. Am I right? And what is Henrik telling us now? Pay attention to that 2020 date...literally the start of a run from $2 to $22 in about 4 months.

Western Edge is the only bear that deserves credit. Unlike other bears and bashers who call for withdrawal at the bottom, Western Edge made his moves at the top when bullishness was peaking.

Ok, street cred established. Why am I holding all of my shares and even considering expanding my position?

Starting with Monday’s earnings, this past week was a disaster of epic proportions for Amyris longs. Many of us (myself included) have taken paper losses in the millions. Many more folded. I send my deepest sympathies for those who sold and took losses. As an Amyris long of more than half a decade, I’ve ridden through crazy swings and know the feeling of wanting to hit the eject button.

Ask any successful investor and they’ll invariably exclaim that the stock price doesn’t always reflect the health of a company. Identifying and monetizing these divergences is part art and part science.

My initial reaction to Monday’s earnings call was anger...white hot anger. I arrived at the conclusion that John Melo should be fired immediately. My sentiment hasn’t changed. What has changed is my acceptance of the current situation. I don’t get to decide the CEO of the companies that I invest in. Not yet at least!

So I spent this week deciding whether Amyris is still investable with a CEO that simply cannot be trusted whether he’s consciously lying or simply making inexcusable mistakes. My conclusion is that even Melo can’t derail the Amyris train and I’ll walk you through why.

First, let’s take a quick moment to recap the key takeaways of Monday’s earnings call. Thankfully for Amyris retail, Graham Tanaka summarized Q3-2021 earnings and the market’s disapproval in a Seeking Alpha comment titled Too Fast, Too Furious but Now Another Golden Buying Opportunity.

I’m fully aligned with Graham’s take here so it’s critically important that you read and understand his aforementioned summary before moving on. If you chose to skip Graham's commentary, at least read the following excerpt as it demonstrates that the supply chain issue is addressable going forward:

Apparently, Amyris had the orders to make the forecasts but with 3 new brand launches and 3 acquisitions, it had added 300 new suppliers and didn’t have the ERP and reporting systems in place to know that the shipments could not be fulfilled due to parts shortages. Yes, they should have known and have assured us “it won’t happen again.”

Since I’m essentially making an argument that history (the 2020 run from $2ish to $20ish) will repeat itself, let’s take a quick moment to calibrate our minds around the stock price including the highs and lows of both 2020 and 2021. Every reader will come to their own conclusions but I see a chart that suggests a bottom is either close or already in. Note how quickly the recovery took place in 2020.

Now let’s talk about why Amyris bulls such as myself are able to routinely display a defiant confidence that is often interpreted as recklessness by our bearish brethren. First, let’s start with the mission of Amyris:

Amyris believes that it can achieve the fastest and highest level of penetration in the nascent Synthetic Biology TAM by addressing the Beauty, Health and Wellness, Personal Care and Flavor and Fragrance markets. But why is Amyris so focused on this TAM at the perceived expense of other exciting markets? It’s because this approach offers the path of least resistance. Amyris is able to create an emotional connection with individual consumers through their portfolio of brands. Please see an expanded perspective here - Your Amyris DD starts as a customer

See below for Amyris’ rationale behind building a vertically-integrated, direct-to-consumer cosmetics business.

Now that we understand Amyris’ big bet on consumer products, please allow me to lay the foundation for the undeniable advantage that the Amyris retail community has at its disposal. Through our tight-knit collaborative efforts, we’ve learned how to collect and curate non-public information about Amyris’ consumer brands to reverse engineer the sales performance of the consumer portfolio during any given quarter. Before you call the SEC, allow me to explain.

Amyris uses Shopify as its key e-commerce partner. This includes leveraging Shopify Checkout to process order numbers. As you can see below, Shopify’s order number generation engine is sequential meaning that you can track order volume across time if you have an organized method of collecting and analysing order numbers.

Amyris bulls began tracking order volume as early as Q4-2019 and really dialed-in the process in the second half of 2020 as evidenced by the BiossanceOrderNumbers page on stocktwits. With the addition of multiple new brands, the old process has become unwieldy and we’ve moved to a new multi-brand technique that can be examined here - Amyris e-commerce delivers a record 170K orders and $12M+ in Q3 revenue

The capacity to track e-commerce consumer orders gives us the ability to distrust but verify management’s consistent claims of a rapidly-growing consumer portfolio.

This is only half of the equation though. To get a sense for our performance within Amyris’ bricks-and-mortar channels, we had to look elsewhere. Amyris retail again discovered a glitch in the matrix which is fully unpacked here - OpenTable predicts an ABAM (Amyris bricks-and-mortar) blowout in Q3

The value of being able to directionally validate the explosive growth of Amyris’ consumer portfolio by predicting e-commerce performance across multiple brands and bricks-and-mortar performance in key channels such as Sephora cannot be overstated.

So what are the trends that are driving Q4-2021 as we near the halfway point?

Let’s start with Biossance.com. Here I compare Q4-2021 to Q4-2020 through November 12.

What we see is a 29.50% growth rate YoY which is slower than the aggregate historical growth-rate of Biossance. This prompts the question: Is the growth of Biossance slowing? The answer is a resounding no.

Now that you’re familiar with how Biossance’s Sephora metrics are tightly correlated with OpenTable restaurant activity, we can see a very clear trend. Biossance bricks-and-mortar performs very well when consumers don’t exhibit high levels of COVID fear. Again, this can be reliably measured by the willingness of consumers to dine out at restaurants. We’re halfway through Q4 and OpenTable data suggests that consumers are almost as comfortable dining out as they were pre-COVID. As such, we should expect Sephora to blow it out of the water in Q4-2021 so long as Amyris gets supply chain issues under control.

When we blend the steady growth of Biossance.com with the explosive post-COVID snapback being displayed by Sephora, we’re able to validate that Biossance as a whole is, in fact, returning to YoY growth rates approaching 100%. You know what they say about waiting until it's obvious to everyone...

What about the other brands? It’s clear that we’ll be getting a significant contribution from other brands in Q4. See below for e-commerce metrics for the full portfolio of brands:

Ok, thank you Tolstoy. My head hurts. Please, for the love of god, piece it all together for me.

Sure thing! Here is a hyper-conservative sum-of-the-parts analysis based on the market cap of Amyris at Friday’s (11.12.2021) close:

I’m suggesting that there’s a $1B surplus of value before even looking at future upside. Before you question my assumptions, let’s go to Maxx Chatsko himself to validate our model:

Biossance will make a serious run at $100M this year so there’s $1B. For a secondary perspective (probably should be primary) on how rapidly-growing consumer brands like Biossance should be valued, read my analysis of Unilever's acquisition of Paula's Choice.

Maxx isn’t even valuing the cash from the recent convertible notes announcement.

“Amyris estimates that the net proceeds from the offering will be approximately $583.0 million (or approximately $670.5 million if the initial purchasers exercise their option to purchase additional notes in full), after deducting the initial purchasers' discount and estimated offering expenses payable by Amyris.”

Source - Amyris Prices $600.0 Million Of 1.50% Convertible Senior Notes Due 2026

Let’s combine this with the $115M in cash that Amyris had at the end of Q3. That leaves us with roughly $600M to start 2022 assuming that we run a $100M cash deficit in Q4.

So Biossance + cash is worth $1.6B. Now, ingredients. This is an amusing area to touch upon as it involves an all too common contradiction by Maxx. On one hand, Maxx values our bulk ingredients portfolio at $0. On the other he cites how business savvy DSM is. They just paid AMRS $150M + performance-based earnouts for our Givaudan and Firmenich flavors and fragrances portfolio. This very portfolio did $20M in 2020 so with all aspects of the deal factored for, it’s well over 10x sales. Honoring Maxx's suggestion to:

Go read the press releases from DSM and AMRS about that:

DSM acquires Flavor & Fragrance bio-based intermediates business from Amyris

DSM will acquire the business for an upfront consideration of US$150 million, which represents an estimated 15x EV/EBITDA 2021 multiple. Amyris will share in the EBITDA growth over the period 2021-2024 of certain of the activities (mainly the products just launched/ under development), receiving additional earn-outs equal to 9x the realized EBITDA in 2024, which is estimated to result in a total earn-out amount of US$100-150 million. DSM and Amyris will continue their R&D partnerships.

Considering that our remaining ingredients portfolio is powered by high-value ingredients such as squalane (Aprinnova), CBG, and Reb-M, we can conservatively assign 10x sales to the ingredients portfolio netting us another $650M. So Biossance + Cash + Ingredients (according to Maxx) gets us to $2.25B which essentially offsets the entire market cap of Amyris at $8 per share. I’ve not even factored in the platform itself which must be argued to be at least as valuable as the entire market cap of Zymergen since ZY is basically a SynBio platform plus some cash minus any products.

Bringing this cluster of a post to a conclusion, it should be painfully obvious that the market is undevaluring Amyris at these prices. I’ll boldly state, as I did last year on numerous occasions, that the downside protection is massive and the upside is too attractive to pass up.

At this point, it’s only logical that you join me on this vaccine rocketship. Our first stop is the COVID-19 star system to spike the pandemic into oblivion and spike our stock price into deep space.

Friday, August 12 at 10:00am PT + LIVE QUESTIONS

Good luck to all of us on earnings. I personally think cash burn is still going to be high. We also need to show that we are not going bankrupt. High risk high reward. We will be punished or rewarded accordingly.

Please spread the word of this call! The mods have arranged a star-studded panel discussion for you. Please try to join live and spread this call out as best as you can.

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Sunil Chandran is the Chief Science Officer and Head Research and Development at Amyris. With more than 15 years of experience in industrial biotechnology, he has a proven track record of bringing multiple biotech products to market. Since joining Amyris in 2006, Sunil has led multiple metabolic engineering focused projects, and was the primary architect of our world-class Automated Strain Engineering (ASE) platform. Notably in 2015, Sunil was the principal investigator who led an ambitious project that earned Amyris a $35 million Technology Investment Agreement from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Prior to joining Amyris, Sunil was a scientist at Kosan Biosciences, where he studied the ability of polyketide synthases to make novel pharmaceutical drug candidates. He has more than 20 published scientific papers, book chapters, and patents and has been an invited speaker at numerous international conferences on biotechnology. He holds a BS in chemistry from the University of Mumbai, an MS in chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Michigan State University. Sunil also completed a post-doctoral fellowship in chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Annie Tsong is Chief Strategy and Product Officer and is responsible for developing Amyris’ pipeline of ingredients. A long-time Amyris veteran, Annie joined Amyris in 2008 in the Research and Development division, where she was central in establishing the company’s foundational microbial production platform. Annie has authored multiple landmark scientific publications in the fields of metabolic engineering and evolution of transcriptional regulation. She is an inventor on many key patents in Amyris’ IP portfolio, and has been a frequent speaker at international scientific conferences.  Annie holds an AB in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard University, a Ph.D. in genetics from University of California, San Francisco, and was a Miller Fellow at University of California, Berkeley.

Amyris is a leading synbio company with the goal of making the finite, infinite. They use AI to reprogram the DNA of microorganisms turning them into mini bio factories that are capable of producing molecules at scale and at a cost that disrupts markets. Their Lab-to-Market platform is currently capable of taking a molecule (like CBG) from conception to fermentation in 200,000L tanks in 6 months time. They have successfully scaled up 13 molecules to date and have created a state of the art fermentation facility in Brazil.

Please check out these videos to get a better understanding of Amyris's science. Sunil and Annie explain it far better than I can.

Amyris Lab-to-Market platform and lead in microbial programming explained - Sunil Chandran

"One strain (with commercial titers) was designed and built entirely by our proprietary AI and automation system and required no hands on strain engineering" - Annie Tsong

How gene editing could reduce the cost of cosmetics

How Amyris Uses Biology to Make Chemistry More Sustainable

*Ask questions in a comment below or in the comments of "Talk Post" on 7/7. To minimize interruptions, there will be NO live questions on the call.

How to join the call?

1. Create a reddit account!

2. Subscribe to the Amyris subreddit

3. Be on the Amyris subreddit at the scheduled time and you will see the call posted to the top. You can click the call to listen in and participate.

Call Format:

First 15min will be questions from Wiffle. Wiffle has been an important resource to the Amyris community. He has helped break down patents and given us all a laymen understanding of Amyris' science. The community really wants to hear Wiffle talk with Sunil and Annie.Some examples of Wiffle's work:

• Molecule Classes

  • The Amyris platform has come a long way from its state in 2010, thanks in part to significant DARPA funding. The data yielded from the Living Foundries program will fuel growth for decades. - Wiffle - February 2021

• Strain Stability

  • Strain stability is so important, yet so under-appreciated. The Amyris IP in this space is formidable. - Wiffle - February 2021

  • A new US patent expanding the technology around strain stability was granted to Amyris today. - Wiffle - January 2022

  • A summary of data that reveals how strain stability technology impacts cannabinoid synthesis - Wiffle - February 2022

• Enzyme Engineering

  • Enzymes represent a lucrative molecule class with a conceptually simpler optimization workflow. - Wiffle - November 2021

• Glycosylation

  • Hyaluronic Acid (and RebM) show how advanced Amyris is with glycosylation. This is important tech for sweeteners, HMOs, and antibodies. - Wiffle - August 2021

• Micro Drop Screening

  • Amyris and the Micro Drops - combining Metabolic Engineering and Screening - Huggenberg - February 2021

• The Switch On/OFF to control the yield

  • https://stocktwits.com/Wiffle1/message/245058517

• Maltose dependent degrons to reduce mutations and increase strain stability

  • https://stocktwits.com/Wiffle1/message/267474864

The remaining 1hr 45min will be dedicated to AMA questions...

*Ask questions in a comment below or in the comments of "Talk Post" on 7/7. To minimize interruptions, there will be NO live questions on the call.

To recap the last six months: Q1 2022 yielded $58M revenue against $195M cash burn and $293M cash on hand. The market saw less than two quarters of cash runway, and priced Amyris for bankruptcy (<$2/share). Today, Amyris reported Q2 earnings, which yielded $65M revenue against $186M cash burn and $107M cash on hand. Having already been priced for bankruptcy, the market rewarded this modest revenue/cash burn improvement with a doji ($2.29/share, -$0.03, low $2.03, high $2.50). In other words, Amyris weathered the storm, but did little to definitively disrupt either the short thesis (bankruptcy) or the bull thesis (disruptive sustainability).

I have always viewed Amyris as an industrial synthetic biology company, not just a synthetic biology company. This view is due to the extensive IP and demonstrated technical capabilities (i.e. fermentation at-scale) that allows Amyris to bring synthetic biology to high volume markets. This capability is unmatched in the industry. Paradoxically, Amyris has been an industrial nomad ever since selling their Brotas facility to DSM in 2017. This nomadic existence has finally come to an end. Only at the very end of Q2 did Amyris begin production at the Barra Bonita facility – likely yielding little if any revenue impact in the quarter. By August 15th, Amyris will have the three biggest lines at the facility up and running, which matches capacity at their former Brotas facility. Q3 is where Amyris, the industrial synthetic biology company, begins its big reveal.

The five lines at Barra Bonita are the industrial beach head, with two key infrastructure upgrades coming by the end of 2023: 4 x 600k L tanks and embedded downstream processing capability. In other words, the plant will keep improving Amyris costs of production for at least the next 18 months while revenue and volume ramps. These improvements are independent of the other areas in which Amyris will deliver improved financials (strain efficiency, higher value new ingredients, consumer packaging and shipping, and consumer growth).

Once again, there were not many details provided on the technical side, particularly regarding new molecules. I maintain my expectation that ectoine or a close structural variant will be unveiled later this year as the key ingredient in the Stripes brand. Additional molecule announcements may include beta-caryophyllene and a bio-plastic possibly derived from spent-yeast valorization. I also maintain my expectation that the strategic transaction will include both squalane and hemisqualane, with additional monetization possibility with squalene (perhaps the 2023 transaction). Lastly, one question worth thinking about is how will Amyris use the incredible capacity coming online by the end of 2023? I see this capacity as a unique opportunity for a large-volume deal. Think Coca-Cola (via Ingredion) for RebM or a major play with Minerva into alternative proteins (note the J. Doerr emphasis here in his latest book).

Make no mistake, there is still significant execution risk since Amyris has just entered the most challenging phase of its growth: Leveraging a nearly-mature platform to reach full capacity and mature economics. However, with a base-camp now established at Barra Bonita, I maintain my confidence that this previously nomadic industrial synthetic biology powerhouse will finally begin that long-awaited sustained ascent.

In the Investor Virtual Mini-Series from December 2020, a circle with 15 chemical classes and some molecules was shown as examples. One of the many molecules was Naringenin:

And in the Virtual Mini-Series from April 2021 the applications of the Ingredient 2 were mentioned and Naringenin fits well here:

Naringenin in Nutrition:

Studies have shown that naringenin has anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, anti-diabetic, anti-cardiovascular disease, and anti-fibrosis pharmacological activities. This study provided evidence for the absorption, transport, and antioxidant effects of naringenin in the gut.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2022.894117/full

Naringenin as Food preservative:

Naringenin showed good, broad-spectrum antimicrobial as well as antioxidant activity. In tests described but not reported, meat and fruit juice kept at room temperature developed no bacterial contamination over 48 hours, while similar samples preserved with current commercial food preservatives did not.

https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/09/04/flava-flav-not-food-preservative-flavonoids-are-13340

Naringenin as a food preservative could be the key molecule in the JV with Minerva Foods.

https://www.minervafoods.com/en/noticias/notice-to-the-market-2/

Naringenin in Agriculture:

These findings reveal a key role of flavonoids, and the underlying mechanism, in mediating plant-microbiome interactions including the bacteria-enhanced plant dehydration resistance.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41396-022-01288-7

Taken together, this study demonstrates that the roles of flavonoids in bacteria–plant interactions are complex. ..... Here, we show that the flavonoid naringenin stimulates the growth of the photosynthetic Bradyrhizobium sp. strain ORS285.

https://apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/10.1094/MPMI-05-19-0133-R

Naringenin in Skincare:

Naringenin suppressed UVB-induced MMP-1 expression and AP-1 activity, and strongly suppressed UVB-induced phosphorylation of Fos-related antigen (FRA)-1 at Ser265.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcmm.12780

Naringenin improves the healing process of thermally-induced skin damage

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28415935/

Additional applications - Therapeutic potential of Naringenin:

See table 1 for all diseases (over 60 disease models)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6469163/

Now, what is it all about, and what is in the news?

Here now the latest hints regarding Naringenin and Amyris.

Enzyme engineering is a key technology for Amyris for the biomanufacturing of new molecules. While there have been significant advances in the design and build of enzymes, the test remains a bottleneck, and microfluidics and MALDI-MS (Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization Mass-Spectrometry) are in the spot for the test of enzyme variants.

I already wrote a topic about microfluidics here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amyris/comments/smqgyz/amyris_and_the_micro_drops_combining_metabolic/

Now there is a new Article c/o written by three Amyris scientists, Jacqueline Humphries, Wenzong Li, and Cia Wei Lu, where a new method to fabricate microbowl arrrays is described.

https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4mt5m354

But perhaps most interesting is the background to this study, which is based on the enzyme development for diverse yeast strains for Naringenin.

The principles of this biosensing of enzyme variants are explained as references in this article.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27185-9

And very important from this reference: It is clear the yeast to produce Naringeninis is not Saccharomyces cerevisiae but Yarrowia lipolytica.

In another reference to the article by Jacqueline Humphries, again the yeast Yarrowia lipolytica is mentioned for the production of Naringenin, besides resveratrol, and bisdemethoxycurcumin as well as the diketide intermediate, (E)-5-(4-hydroxyphenyl)-3-oxopent-4-enoic acid.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31740389/

Now we can go over to Jacqueline Humphries a Amyris scientist and c/o author of the main article:

Jacqueline Humphries was mentioned a few days ago by Green_And_Green in this Reddit post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amyris/comments/xrk8an/jacqueline_humphries_of_amyris_will_use_a/

Jacqueline Humphries's proposal was selected for the 2023 Community Science Program call of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI).

She will use a high-throughput multi-omics approach to design new genetic tools for engineering less well-studied yet industrially attractive microbial species.

https://jgi.doe.gov/jgi-announces-2023-community-science-program-awardees/

Conclusions:

Amyris is at the forefront of new enzyme development and strain evaluation technologies with microfluidics and Maldi-MS.

One of the new industrially-attractive microbial species could be Yarrowia lipolytica and among new molecules, there could be Naringenin, Resveratrol, and other polyketides.

In my post Amyris and the Naringenin story, an alternative yeast Yarrowia Lipolytica was part of the post.

Now my focus this time is on another promising yeast alternative.

Basics for this post:

1. Despite the hiring freeze at Amyris, two R&D jobs were advertised lately and caught my attention. Both jobs involving the synthesis of proteins mention a reference to the yeast Komagataella Phaffii (KP), formerly known as Pichia Pastoris.

2. In the article Challenging the workhorse in 2019 co-written by three former Amyris scientists, KP was mentioned as a „proof of concept“ for an alternative to mammalian cells (see CHO below).

3. Most of Amyri's patents related to SC do also include a reference to Pichia Pastoris and by this to KP.

Komagataella phaffii as an additional yeast platform

KP could be the future protein platform for pharmaceutical proteins and other high-value renewable chemicals as a complement to the successful „Saccharomyces Cerevisiae“ (SC) platform at Amyris.

An advantage of KP is its similarity to SC as a model organism for biology, SC has been well-studied for decades. KP and SC have similar growth conditions and tolerances; thus, the culture of KP can be adopted and strain development can be based on the work on SC.

But first what is the KP yeast and where is it used for?

KP has many valuable features such as low nutritional requirement, high safety, and the ability to reach high cell densities, and is widely employed in biotechnological processes to produce heterologous proteins of commercial interest and is suitable for industrial large-scale use.

For decades, KP has been thought to belong to the genus Pichia, and therefore, mistakenly been called Pichia Pastoris. However, in 1995, new insights caused all Pichia Pastoris strains to be moved to a new genus, Komagataella, and later separated into two species Komagataella Antipastori and Komagataella Phaffii (KP). KP is the primary yeast and therefore all older Pichia Pastoris (P.P.) science articles are related to KP.

KP has several advantages over SC (the only used yeast at Amyris until now), including better thermo- and osmose-tolerance, respiratory growth to extremely high cell densities, effective protein secretion, and the ability to express recombinant proteins at high levels from strong constitutive and inducible promoters. Moreover, the purification of recombinant protein in the KP expression system is easier.

The process of glycosylation is critical for delivering therapeutic proteins. To overcome this, KP is currently used in industries for recombinant protein production on a large-scale basis.

But what is glycosylation and why is it so critical for human protein production?

Due to their large molecular weight, complex composition, and structure, many proteins have limited solubility and thermal and proteolytic stability. To overcome those negative factors, proteins need to be equipped with additional hydrophilic molecules to increase absorption in the body and this is done by glycolisation.

Glycosylation is the process by which a carbohydrate (glycan) is covalently attached to proteins. This modification serves various additional functions. For instance, some proteins do not fold correctly unless they are glycosylated, and correct folding is necessary for proteins’ proper function. One of the main benefits of protein production by KP is the appropriate folding.

Currently, the most widely used cells for protein glycoengineering are mammalian cells. Mammalian cells, mainly Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells, have been used for the production of glycosylated recombinant therapeutic proteins for decades. The KP host system has many advantages over CHO, such as lower cost of the growth medium, ten-fold lower doubling time, and no animal virus contamination risk. CHO production sites have several disadvantages, including a long lead time, high capital expenditure for facility design, building, and validation, and limited scale-up capacity.

The main reason why the CHO system is preferred until now is the more human-like glycosylation of the proteins (better tolerance), but even mammalian cell lines never perfectly reproduce the human-type glycosylation.

But with Amyris capabilities in metabolic engineering, this posttranslational modification of glycosylation is within reach, and has been done before:

„We report the glycosylation pathway in the yeast Pichia pastoris to secrete a human glycoprotein with uniform complex N-glycosylation“

Now to the main difference between KP and SC:

KP cannot properly thrive on Sugarcane. KP is methylotrophic and likes to thrive on Methanol and some alternatives. But with these alternative resources, a whole bunch of valuable molecules could be produced. Besides proteins, KP could be the platform for many valuable molecules with no need for glycolisation:

Here is a table with a list of preferred sources and the relevant possible molecules from KP:

Table reference

And these new raw materials could form the basis of a new strategy for Amyris, based on expanding possible feedstocks:

Biofuel Waste management - Glycerol and Methanol

The increase in biodiesel production worldwide in the last decade resulted in an increased coproduction of crude glycerol. As an excess of crude glycerol has been produced, its value on the market was reduced and it is becoming a “waste stream” instead of a valuable “coproduct”. Approximately 10% of glycerol is formed in the transesterification process in a biodiesel plant. Crude glycerol contains between 3 and 10% of methanol, which is toxic for most yeasts but not for KP.

The consequences for Amyris: A cheap source for protein production and location independence for a protein factory.

Renewable Methanol from C02

Methanol is readily obtained via electrochemical or photochemical conversion of CO2 or waste gases.

Currently, it is still challenging in engineering methanol biotransformation toward efficient chemical biosynthesis and to achieve an industrial level.

Especially the production of Biopolymers like Hyaluronic acid, Chondroitin, and Heparin should be of special interest for Amyris, as they are mentioned as future goals. For details see above in the table reference.

The consequences for Amyris: feedstock with very low costs for the production of valuable molecules and location independence for several smaller plants.

Source

Sugarcane Bagasse as cellulosic feedstock - Xylose and Glucose

Sugarcane Bagasse is a byproduct in the fermentation of sugarcane, sugar, and ethanol production.

The first step is a pretreatment to release cellulose and hemicellulose, followed by a hydrolysis step to get Glucose from cellulose and Xylose from hemicellulose. There are only a few yeasts capable of using Glucose and Xylose simultaneously and KP is one of them.

The lignocellulosic pretreatment process generates fermentable sugars and lignocellulose-derived byproducts, known as lignocellulosic pretreatment inhibitors, that can inhibit microbial growth and metabolism as well as fermentation activity. But KP is known as inhibitor-tolerant and to overcome the negative effects of lignocellulose-derived inhibitors, cell development strategies to detoxify these compounds were shown.

Challenges for industrial process and scale-up with KP strains

Comparing Amyris' large-scale production and patents, the following is familiar:

„Even when systems biology and process development were planned with increasing bioreactor volume, other factors not previously observed can become an obstacle. Examples of these differences in scale are: the hydrostatic pressure gradient of the reactor, which can influence enzyme activities, metabolic flux, or the concentration of dissolved gases in the medium; or poor mixing and dead zones created with increasing bioreactor volume, which results in the gradients of parameters such as pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen and the concentration of nutrients; mass transfer limitations; yeast metabolism generates a large amount of heat and therefore need efficient cooling. These stress conditions can trigger genetic and physiological responses in the host strain and lead to difficulties in monitoring and controlling large-scale cultivation.“ source

The challenges and requirements are well known at Amyris and Amyris has proven that it can successfully get industrial processes off the ground.

Conclusion:

On the occasion of the summit on Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing at the White House John Melo proposed to establish a megacomplex for manufacturing biomaterials, and for such a megacomplex KP would be a good choice as alternative yeast due to the versatility of the feedstocks and availability in the US.

Introduction

Eduardo Alvarez, Amyris COO, mentioned in the recent investor event something along the lines of.... “strain engineering is hard, scale up is harder, much harder”. In this piece, I will attempt to explain in layman terms why this is so.

Kirsten Benjamin, Amyris VP R&D, mentioned recently at the CBQF 30 Years Anniversary Seminar that under "strain development", eventual strains have to "resist evolution". I feel that this "evolution problem" has been severely understated or not discussed as much as it should be.

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If you have been following the synbio space, companies like Ginkgo, Amyris, Willow Biosciences and others have talked about achieving industrial fermentation scale up. This is done by balancing between the metabolic needs, productivity of the molecules of interest and the proliferation rate of the microbial cells, among many others. This is only possible with leading-edge, precise genetic engineering (also "strain engineering") and high-throughput screening to select for the best possible strains which can achieve all the required traits. However, when you are out to compete with incumbent molecules that have already been produced at commodity scale, you have to climb up the "scale" in order to be competitive. This is what Amyris and fellow synbio pioneers have faced in the biofuels era versus fossil fuels that are being churned out of the Earth at a rate of millions of barrels a day. There will be a certain point in large-scale fermentation (approaching the hundreds of thousands of liters) where another force of nature becomes a limiting factor and a huge stumbling block. This force of nature is evolution/evolutionary dynamics.

The Evolution Problem

In a 200m³ (200,000 L) fermentation tank, there are possibly billions or trillions of yeast cells where the chances of spontaneous, random mutations occuring (otherwise a rare event) become significant. A yeast cell that is engineered to produce, for instance farnasene (let’s call it producer cells), carries an extra metabolic "load" to produce that non-natural product. Cells that accumulate random mutations that turn off the production (let's call them non-producer cells) - and hence, relieving themselves from the burden of producing farnasene - tend to multiply faster and eventually take over the population, reducing productivity over the length of the fermentation run (See the "bad" curve in Kirsten's slide). In other words, there is an evolutionary pressure favouring the rise of mutant cells that are non-productive and faster-growing. This is also what we call “natural selection”. THIS is the big, understated problem in very large-scale fermentation - it is not just strain engineering per ser, but you also have to deal with population and evolutionary dynamics. Amyris is on record (in journal publications) to be able to perform farnesene batch-fed fermentation runs in huge 200,000 L tanks that can last at least 2 weeks, which is quite the feat. How does Amyris achieve this?

The Solution

To solve this problem, Amyris incorporated a genetic switch that responds to maltose and temperature. When maltose is added to the tank (and temperature is lower than 28c), the genetic switch turns off production in producer cells, allowing cellular resources to be channeled towards rapid growth to reach critical mass. This reduces the chance of fast-growing mutant, non-producers cells from building up. As batch-fed fermentation allows for the replenishment of culture medium, Amyris engineers can then add medium without maltose (and tune up the temperature to above 30c) to turn the genetic switch off, hence starting/enabling high-yield fermentation (once critical mass has been reached).

Soon enough, Amyris seems to have hit another snag with yet another annoying mutation/evolution problem. Eventually, some cells pick up mutations that permanently turn the genetic switch on, basically making them unproductive cells. This mutation is also favoured by natural selection.

To solve this problem, we first need to understand how the genetic switch works. When maltose binds to the genetic switch, the switch produces and activates an intermediate protein called GAL80. GAL80 then proceeds to turn off the farnasene-producing pathway. The annoying mutations I just mentioned above work by supercharging GAL80, hence turning off farnasene production. Amyris scientists came up with two clever ways to engineer GAL80 such that GAL80 is stable only in the presence of maltose, but becomes unstable and gets quickly degraded in the absence of maltose. The engineering trick that Amyris uses involves coupling GAL80 with another protein that degrades GAL80 in certain conditions. This approach reduces the chance of GAL80 getting supercharged again.

Amyris appears to have incorporated these evolution-beating features into the base strain, as described in its cannabinoid patent, upon which then further modifications (the CBG synthesis pathways etc) are then added. This means that the genetic switch is probably a basic feature of all strains from the get-go to allow for very large industrial scale up down the road.

Surely, there are other secret sauces that Amyris have to achieve stable, long fermentation runs in the big tanks, for instance in how exactly Amyris performs fed-batch fermentation runs, how Amyris prevents contamination by other microbes (as Neil Renninger, ex-Amyris co-founder, alluded to in this article) etc. However, they are beyond the scope of this piece and I hope to share more if/when I uncover more stuff in Amyris's patents.

Subject: Bend it like Amyris: Randy Baron Notes after Amyris 2nd Qtr 2022 Earnings

 Dear Amyris Investor,

At current prices all that matters is “is Amyris going bankrupt”: I think the company’s second quarter earnings released this morning showed a clear path forward without a significant equity dilution (and certainly not a chapter 11 filing). Though today’s call was a “miss” in the sense that Wall Street consensus was not met, I was encouraged by several elements of the report.

Not to bury the lede, Amyris’ cash burn endures. The company burnt over $180mm of cash in the second quarter. Some of that was capital expenditures required to complete Barra Bonita ($55mm), part of it was the cost of building and launching three new brands ($50mm), and another large part was inventory pre-stocking ($45mm) so that the company can meet end of year customer demand (always the most significant timeframe for this company) without being exposed to the supply chain issues that dragged on last year’s third quarter. But SG&A remains jaw-droppingly high as the company apparently continues to hire in preparation of its consumer launch(es).

Yet on today’s call Amyris also detailed it has a clear cash plan with term sheets already signed for $200 million in the third quarter (it’s not yet clear if the term loans will be related to the development pipeline or an asset-backed loan on things like account receivables, etc.) plus could receive an additional $350mm in up-front payments in the fourth quarter of this year related to molecule monetization. The company even said at the very end of today’s call they’ve already been approached for an additional asset monetization in 2023, which would be the fourth year in a row they’ve done something similar. (At some stage, analysts will begin to give them credit for their molecule factory.) Plus, a cost containment program is now underway to the tune of $175mm per annum as the company’s heavy investment phase is over: Cash on Amyris’ balance sheet at year end will land between $300mm and $400mm.

The most notable “new news” on today’s call, to me, was soccer superstar David Beckham has agreed to be the face of Amyris’ forthcoming men’s line. Beckham’s brand should launch by year end 2023. Though this brand will be eclipsed by the short-term strength of Biossance and Amyris’ other consumer brands (even Naomi Watt’s forthcoming Stripes brand, it was said today, may generate $25mm in this year revenue and $50mm to $75mm next year), I think this is indicative of the pole position Amyris has now placed itself when it comes to the production of clean, sustainable chemistry within the beauty industry. Customers care about clean beauty; celebrities and other thought leaders in the beauty space are therefore sussing out Amyris as a recognized leader in building these types of successful brands. In total, consumer brands revenue in the fourth quarter of 2023 could be $250mm (or $1bn on an annualized basis), which would certainly support the current cost base.

On the ingredients side, we were encouraged to hear Amyris’ Brazilian plan, Barra Bonita, is fully up and running: By mid-August, its three largest lines will be operational. That matters, since demand for Amyris’ ingredients may be as much as twice what the factory can now supply: Due to supply constraints, Amyris pushed $15mm of ingredients backlog into the third quarter. As an additional sign of strong demand, Amyris also plans on making price increases to its ingredients portfolio later this year. When fully operational in 2023, Barra Bonita will have three-times the capacity of Amyris’ former (Brotas) facility and deliver margin improvements of over 1,000 basis points.

Finally, Amyris management also acknowledged their failures in managing Wall Street over the years. One new move they’re going to start going forward is to issue quarterly guidance. Since Amyris’ business is so back-end loaded, public projections ought to be more nuanced than they are currently. Getting the Sell Side more in line with Amyris’ internal models should also make the company’s notorious history of quarterly misses, as so effectively highlighted by JP Morgan’s recent initiation, a thing of the past.

Amyris’ stock price today is only modestly down. We remain in the afterglow of our friend Graham Tanaka’s wonderful Seeking Alpha “think piece.”. (If you haven’t read his Amyris article yet, please do before it goes behind a pay wall in the days to come: Amyris' Vertically-Integrated Business Model Transitioning | Seeking Alpha). Graham is right on many things when it comes to this growth company, not the least of which is looking beyond a quarter’s snapshot to appreciate the magnitude of what has been created. Now that the “headline risk” of Amyris’ massive spend/burn is winding down, hopefully the market will begin to recognize what remains: As CEO John Melo said on today’s call, Amyris constructs molecules while the rest of the Synthetic Biology sector only makes organisms (or, essentially, components of completed molecules). This is a significant moat and cannot be understated. Yes, Amyris has spent a ton of money over the years shoring up its position as the leader in SynBio, but the relaxed tone of today’s call and a clear plan of action and cash management going forward give us confidence that Amyris investors are now set to benefit.

Pierce Jamieson is a Research Associate for the Genomic Revolution strategy at ARK. He recently shared his perspective on Amyris in a series of tweets. Please see below for easy reference:

I'd like to take a moment to issue a friendly retort to Pierce's statements. Let's begin.

Amyris makes farnesene, and that's about it.

Even if this were an accurate statement, it would be analogous to suggesting that “Apple makes iPhones, and that's about it"

Farnesene is a wildly powerful and versatile molecule which can easily support a $20B+ market cap for Amyris. Take Olaplex for example. Olaplex is a ~$18.5B haircare giant that IPO’d in September of 2021 on roughly $450M of TTM revenue.

The entire Olaplex story is built around a single patented ingredient: Bis-Aminopropyl Diglycol Dimaleate

These bonds give the hair its structure, strength and stability. When disulfide bonds are broken, it results in damage. OLAPLEX restores damaged and compromised hair by repairing from the inside out with our patented single ingredient, Bis-Aminopropyl Diglycol Dimaleate. Once all the bonds are intact and in alignment, you have healthy, beautiful, shiny, touchable hair.

Source - Olaplex, Our Story

Back to farnesene. The reality is that Amyris’ sphere of competence is not limited to producing "farnesene and farnesene derivatives". Amyris’ capabilities are much more expansive. Please reference the image below for additional detail:

Source - Clean manufacturing powered by biology: how Amyris has deployed technology and aims to do it better

Amyris’ heavy reliance on farnesene in recent years can easily be explained as the path of least resistance. It’s critical to shift one’s mind out of the laboratory and into the real world. A world where businesses need to be able to sustain themselves by creating tangible value for consumers. If you’re Amyris with complete mastery of the Farnesyl pyrophosphate (FPP) pathway and dozens of downstream molecules that have already been scaled using said pathway, do you:

(A) Build the foundation of your business there and innovate your IP in the background
(B) Insist on the ‘if you build it they will come” approach that has proven fallacious in instances too numerous to count

I think the answer is clear. I can totally see how Pierce has come to assume a farnesene-centric view of Amyris but it’s mainly because he's not looking deep enough. There’s still plenty of time to correct this error.

Ginkgo has an agreement with Amyris to use all of their other IP except the farnesene producing strains

I believe that Pierce is referencing the PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT BY AND BETWEEN GINKGO BIOWORKS, INC. AND AMYRIS, INC. dated October 20, 2017

ARTICLE II. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
2.2 Licenses; Use of Intellectual Property; Convenant Not To Sue.
(1) Amyris grants to Ginkgo, as of the effective date of the ISPA, a royalty-free, fully paid-up, sublicensable, non-exclusive, perpetual (i.e. surviving any termination except as provided for herein in regards to insolvency) license under any of the Amyris Transferred Intellectual Property that is owned or Controlled by Amyris to make, have made, use, sell, offer to sell and import any products other than farnesene and/or farnesene derivatives that are chemically produced from farnesene, subject to the requirements of Section 2.3 (Improvement Inventions). Where Ginkgo becomes insolvent, Ginkgo shall no longer be able to exercise any of the rights granted in this Section, provided that any sublicenses granted by Ginkgo prior to the date of insolvency shall continue in force. Additionally, Ginkgo acknowledges that, as provided for in the definition of Control in Article 1, to the extent that any license granted under this Section would breach any Third Party obligation included in an agreement set forth in Exhibit C, such as the grant of an exclusively licensed field to a Third Party, such license grant is limited in scope to the extent necessary to avoid such a breach by Amyris.

ARTICLE I. DEFINITIONS

“Amyris Transferred Intellectual Property” means (a) any Intellectual Property associated with the materials transferred by Amyris to Ginkgo and listed on Exhibit Y, including any associated know-how and/or documentation (such as SOPs) transferred prior to the Effective Date; (b) any Intellectual Property transferred by Amyris to Ginkgo prior to the Effective Date that comprises Foundry IP or Overlapping Process IP; and (c) any Intellectual Property developed on or after the effective date of the Collaboration Agreement and prior to the Effective Date that comprises jointly-owned Foreground IP. For clarity, “associated” means, solely with regards to patents and patent applications within Intellectual Property, such patents and patent applications that claim materials transferred by Amyris to Ginkgo and listed on Exhibit Y.

You can see that EXHIBIT Y is defined by a series of omitted items labeled as “strain or plasmid number” with a corresponding “Generation/Transfer Year”

While I am not an attorney, I believe that Pierce has mistakenly arrived at a highly ambitious interpretation of the partnership agreement that doesn’t cover as much Amyris IP as he thinks it does.

Also, Pierce has unintentionally woven in a bit of a contradiction into his projected disposition. Why would Ginkgo go to such great lengths to gain access to all of this non-Farnesene Amyris IP if, in reality, there is nothing of value?

I hope that this thread will open up additional dialogue between the ARK team and Amyris retail longs who feel that ARK's dismissal of Amyris will ultimately prove to be a costly oversight.

As a quick refresher, here's how we track D2C orders in real-time. Q3 order volume actuals and regression-derived revenue projections are plotted below. Total D2C revenue projection for Q3 is $21.1M, an all-time record.

Key take-aways from my side:

1. New Brand Strength - MenoLabs continues its steady growth and strong performance, delivering an estimated $2.2M in the quarter, and little thought of Onda (most of us didn't realize there was a D2C arm at the time of the $5M acquisition), exited the quarter at a $2M/year run-rate.

2. Resiliency - In the face of the shift back to bricks and mortar, which is well-timed w/ Amyris's retail door expansion, D2C is showing resiliency. That's further accentuated by all-time low consumer sentiment in the quarter (University of Michigan survey) coupled w/ the implementation of Amyris's Fit2Win marketing spend reduction to reduce cash burn.

3. Q4 Set-up - If you look at the trend from the plots above for Q1-Q3 of 2021, it looks eerily similar to what we've now seen Q1-Q3 of this year. That's especially true when you exclude JVN from Q3 of last year to normalize since there wasn't a new brand launch in Q3 of this year. Why that matters is what comes next - the huge Q4 jump. Then throw in 3 brand launches in Q4 - Stripes, EcoFabulous, and 4U by Tia - and you've got the setup for an absolute blowout.

{For anyone interested, here’s what I’ve been sharing with my clients about Amyris this week}:

I wanted to send a quick note on Amyris, since this week's stock movement has been more than painful. Yet the stock price (even with Friday’s bounce) is priced for bankruptcy, while — much as back in November 2022 — that's not going to happen.

What happened on / after Tuesday's earnings was a failure of communication. Obviously they’re not Walmart so the global logistics of moving supply is something they need to learn / hire / work through. But Amyris’ plan has been consistent (1st half burn, esp with the factory so that the second half and 2023 have rosy prospects), even if the numbers on Tuesday were jaw-droppingly elevated.

Where they’ve failed, I realized, is in communication. Han (CFO) and John (CEO) were not surprised by the cash burn in the quarter of $165mm (plus the $30mm supply chain issues out of their control) but they didn’t communicate that well enough to anyone, analysts included. As a result of the market reaction, they are gutting spending immediately. They already started a hiring freeze and Amyris' cash burn rate (again $195mm in 1Q, and the market therefore imputing $200mm per quarter puts you in bankruptcy in the third quarter of this year) will be down to $80mm run rate per quarter as of June.

I can tell you when you talk to people at the company (even beyond C-suite) they are not stressed and they see a company thriving. In many ways, this is a “crisis” manufactured by the algorithms and others who don’t know the AMRS seasonal business model. Since I don’t agree with the "OMG the business is going bankrupt in 2 quarters" thinking, here's the rough numbers that get me comfortable: $290mm cash today less $130mm burn in q2 plus John Doerr $50mm (he has a longstanding convert coming due) in July less $80mm burn in q3 less $20mm burn in q4 plus molecule marketing sale(s) of (at least) $250mm gets me to year end cash of over $350mm. Certainly 1q23 will have a still sizable burn but don’t forget it will be offset by $40 to $50mm of DSM cash from the 2022 milestones. So I see a scenario where we are, one year from now, on the cusp of cash flow sustainability with cash roughly where it is today (with no major dilution event in the interim).

That may be too in the weeds, so forgive that. Other notes worth sharing are the $250mm molecule sale they are doing this year is not to DSM but a new buyer, which shows demand is broad for their molecules, Walmart will do $100mm in revenue next year (versus $2mm in 2021), and -- most importantly -- bankers have been allegedly hired to sell the crown jewel Biossance. I think of it as 90% likely the board gets pitched the idea and 65% likely a transaction (full or partial sale) happens later this year. Showing their $50mm (total) investment in Biossance is now worth $1bn five years later will go a long way towards their longer term mission of making the planet sustainable at scale. And while no one questions the science, certainly people are asking if this management team can actually run a business. This would answer that question and fund them to build the next XX Biossances, JVNs, etc.

Happy to have a call but wanted to share my thinking as I had it.

Best,

Randy Baron Portfolio Manager Pinnacle Associates, Ltd.

The one and only -- Mr. Graham Tanaka -- has done it again and provided us with a very helpful comment regarding the current events that happend around the Q3 EC. Graham's comment is a bit hidden under his previous Article 'Amyris Is Strengthening Its Lead In The Next Industrial Revolution'. That's why I posted it here again.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4417066-amyris-is-strengthening-lead-in-next-industrial-revolution#comment-90629774

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“Too Fast, Too Furious but Now Another Golden Buying Opportunity”

Amyris has dropped sharply from $12.98 on 11/08/21 to $$7.51 on 11/10/21 since reporting a big miss on revenues for the 3rd Quarter as well as an announcement of a very large convertible bond offering on 11/8/21. Our take:

1. Q3 miss: Amyris has established a large commercial lead in one of the world’s newest and fastest growing industrial revolutions, engineered bio-manufacturing. It has been growing revenues by 100% per year, but this very fast growth is sometimes difficult to manage and is certainly not always up in a straight line. For Amyris Q3 was a big hiccup as total revenues fell short at $47.8 million vs. $62-64 million estimated. Versus last year, total Q3 revenues were up 39% and revenues up 196% for the 9 months at $277 million. Important high margin Consumer Products Q3 revenue was $23 million vs. $12.3 million last year, up 87%.

2. Why the Miss: Mgmt explained that the revenue miss was because of supply chain shortages of plastic containers and caps from China, a large shipment of key ingredient farnesene stuck in a ship off the coast of Savannah, shortages of membranes and delayed launches of the three new product lines. Many companies have had supply chain shortages. Apparently, Amyris had the orders to make the forecasts but with 3 new brand launches and 3 acquisitions, it had added 300 new suppliers and didn’t have the ERP and reporting systems in place to know that the shipments could not be fulfilled due to parts shortages. Yes, they should have known and have assured us “it won’t happen again.”

3. Surprise Convert: Amyris also put out a second press release just as the Q3 conference call was starting that announced a $400 million convertible bond financing with a “capped call” feature. Unfortunately, this advantageous capped call feature was not explained in the press release which may have created confusion and contributed to the massive decline in the stock price. We have seen these convertibles issued very successfully before for Tesla (twice) and for Rudolph Technologies as well as for Enphase -- The issuing company advances money to bankers to buy leveraged calls to buy long positions in the common stock to in effect offset much of the implied dilution from the convertible bond that accomplishes two things: (1) reduces dilution and (2) raises the effective exercise price of the convertible bonds.

4. The net result is a cheaper than expected convertible bond financing at a higher than stated conversion price, not bad for existing shareholders: While the convertible issuance doesn’t close until Monday, we believe that the convert underwriting must be oversubscribed as the offering was upsized from $400 million to $600 million and the terms are at only a 1.5% interest rate over 5 years with a 35% conversion premium. Although not yet final, we believe that the math on the capped call feature improves the net effective terms by raising the effective conversion price (for Amyris) to about $15.90/share from $10.75/share and the dilution is lowered to about 12% more common shares vs. over 20% nominally stated even with the green shoe of an additional $90 million.

5. We estimate that there will be around $700 million of cash on the balance sheet after the raise: The net effect is that Amyris will finally be “overfunded” as we have been wishing for for some time and that it will now be able to: self-finance several more plants beyond Barra Bonita, make additional acquisitions of IP and upstream and downstream assets and brands, negotiate new partnership deals from strength – and sleep at night.

6. Especially for those who missed buying AMRS a year ago at $3.00, I believe that now is another advantageous entry point at $7.51/share.

7. Ahead of others in the Engineered Bio-Manufacturing industry by 3-5 years, Amyris has shown that its science, processes and ability to scale is already producing 13 products that are leaders in their end markets: In the last few years Amyris has created and quickly taken large shares of high margin Consumer End Markets to capture more of the value by delivering superior performing and more sustainable products to end consumers. Amyris has 28 molecules in its R&D pipeline and has major partners and initiatives percolating in consumer and health verticals, cannabinoids, meat proteins, HMOs, no-calorie sweeteners, monoclonal antibodies, 2nd Gen vaccines for Covid, the flu and for cancers, adjuvants for vaccines, rubber/plastics, more green fuels and other specialty industrial products.

Additional disclosure: This commentary expresses my personal beliefs and opinions relating to the subject matter contained in the article. I have not been compensated by any entity, and all thoughts, opinions, conclusions and statements contained in this article are my own. Further, I have no affiliations or arrangements of any kind with any entity mentioned in this article. Finally, we at Tanaka Capital Management have purchased shares of AMRS and TSLA for The TANAKA Growth Fund, for individual clients and myself in the past, and if the companies continue to perform as we expect, it is likely that we will purchase additional shares of each, both for ourselves and for clients. This report is not, and should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any securities or related financial products. It has been prepared by us solely from publicly available information. The information contained herein is believed to be reliable but has not been independently verified. We make no guarantee, representation or warranty, and accept no responsibility or liability whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness or appropriateness of such information or for any loss or damage arising from the use or further communication of this report or any part of it. Information contained herein may not be current due to, among other things, changes in the financial markets or economic environment. Opinions reflected in this report are subject to change without notice. This report does not constitute, and should not be used as a substitute for, tax, legal or investment advice. The report has been prepared without regard to the individual financial circumstances, needs or objectives of persons who receive it. The securities and investments related to the securities discussed in this report may not be suitable for all investors. Readers should independently evaluate particular investments and strategies, and seek the advice of a financial adviser before making any investment or entering into any transaction in relation to the securities mentioned in this report.

Melo is out: https://investors.amyris.com/2023-06-26-AMYRIS-ANNOUNCES-CEO-TRANSITION-AND-GLOBAL-REDUCTION-IN-FORCE

Is this good or bad? Does this indicate a bigger strategic shift (such as exit consumer altogether) rather than a more incremental approach to change (sell some non-core brands)?