Hello, and welcome to the Life Sciences Investor Forum. On behalf of OTC Markets and our co-host, Zacks Small Cap Research, we are very pleased you've joined us. The next presentation of the day is from Dyadic Applied BioSolutions. Please note you may submit questions for the presenter in the box to the left of the slides. You can also view a company's availability for one-on-one meetings by clicking Book a Meeting. At this point, I am very pleased to welcome Joe Hazelton, President and Chief Operating Officer of Dyadic Applied BioSolutions, which trades on Nasdaq under the symbol DYAI. Welcome, Joe. Thank you, Lily, and thank you everyone for joining today. Truly appreciate your time, and I'm gonna talk to you today about how at Dyadic we're engineering proteins that power progress. Over the last three years, we began to transition of moving Dyadic from an R&D stage company to a truly commercial organization. Hopefully, with what you'll hear about today, we're starting to achieve some of those objectives and move towards a revenue-generating organization. Obviously, some of the things I'll say today are forward-looking. Please refer to our SEC filings for full clarification on our risks as well as full financials. As most of you are aware, Dyadic's been around for a long period of time. We started off in the bioindustrial space, and in 2015 when we exited the bioindustrial space with the DuPont acquisition for around $75 million, we began a journey of trying to re-engineer the cell lines to make more high-value human and animal therapeutic targets. When I joined the company in 2022, I quickly realized that as a platform, C1 is an extremely powerful and versatile platform to produce recombinant proteins and enzymes. We needed to harness that power to produce more products that could be commercialized in shorter periods of time in equally high-value areas, but don't have the same regulatory burden as well as clinical burden that human and animal therapeutics do. In 2022, we started to reposition and start to create a portfolio of products that would not require the same level of investment or same level of time in order to commercialize. In addition to that, we also developed a new or say a sister platform to our C1 platform, which we use in life sciences, which we call Dapibus, which expands our capability into food and nutrition and back into bioindustrial. Over the last three years, we've made that transition and actually completed the transition in about June of last year, where we became Dyadic Applied BioSolutions. We've rebranded the company, we've refocused on product technology rather than platform technology, and now we're accelerating that growth through the launch of products into three core areas, which I'll get into in just a moment. Essentially, we're trying to unlock the potential of the platform through commercializing products that could drive revenue in the near term. With the launches that we currently have ongoing, as well as expected launches later throughout the year, we expect to see a nice revenue curve for Dyadic as we move forward. Why Dyadic and why now? Obviously, the transition of Dyadic from an R&D stage company to commercial has taken, you know, a period of time, which we're fully and acutely aware of. Really what we've done is we've harnessed the proven platform validation that we have for both the C1 and the Dapibus platforms, and we've built around it a robust genetic toolbox as well as additional licensing, like with CRISPR, that we're able to manipulate the cell line to produce different targets, more complex targets, but still retain the benefits of that industrial heritage. We can produce these very high-value proteins and enzymes for a lot less than these traditional platforms. We've made the transition. Our focus is no longer just on human and animal therapeutics, which we all know take years to develop and years to commercialize. We're focusing on non-therapeutic products that can equate to near-term revenue. We've got, you know, that starting to come in in terms of our launch with one of our partners, Proliant Health & Biologicals, as well as one of our other commercial partners, Inzymes. They've both launched products in early 2026. We're really at that inflection point. We're actually beginning to sell our own products. You may have seen last week we announced that we're launching or that we've launched DNase I, which is a molecular biology reagent, as well as already starting to ship product in the fourth quarter of last year. We had some bulk purchase orders for growth factors. We've now expanded that capability, and we've expanded our commercial reach through our partnership with Fermbox Bio, allowing us to have better manufacturing capability. Now we're looking to continue to drive those strategic partnerships and revenue traction through the course of 2026 and into 2027. We're starting to see the beginnings of that revenue starting to generate, and now we're looking to accelerate it and essentially move forward. Now, while we're gonna talk about, you know, life sciences, food, nutrition, and bioindustrial, what we do essentially remains the same. I wanna make that, you know, abundantly clear. We have opportunities in many different segments of the markets that we're in and many different products. Really what we do is strain development and engineering. We're taking our genetic platforms and producing products with it. We essentially design the platforms, we engineer them to express purified protein, and then we help scale it to a level that can be commercialized. That's really what we do. It's the same no matter if we're in life sciences or if we're in food and nutrition or if we're in bioindustrial, what we do is the same for every particular protein. Now, they may have some nuances in terms of how we optimize them, but really we're using our proven platforms to produce products. You know, that's obviously the key for us. As I mentioned, we have two platforms that we use across our life sciences, food, nutrition, and bioindustrial. Our C1 is our platform that produces more complex targets. We actually have a phase one program. C1 has been proven out in a human trial. We validated the platform for not just therapeutic use, but also these high-value input proteins like albumin, which I'll talk about in a little bit as well. Both of these platforms have been engineered for speed, scale, and low-cost sustainable production of recombinant proteins and enzymes. We've engineered the Dapibus platform for the more low-margin or lower-margin markets like food, nutrition, and bioindustrial, where you have to have that, you know, high level of production, but the proteins a lot of times aren't quite as complex. Anytime you engineer a cell line to produce something more complex, you damage its potential to produce, you know, proteins in general, or at least you hinder it a little bit. With the Dapibus platform, it's not as highly evolved as C1, so it's able to produce, you know, some of these more simple proteins at higher levels and lower cost. We've got two platforms that we can use across the universe of our products. Now, our revenue strategy is fairly simple. It's buy, brand, and build. People can buy products directly from Dyadic, which we manufacture through our partnership with Fermbox, as well as some of our other CDMO partnerships. They can buy direct bulk, or we can do OEM white label sales. Our focus is on targeting suppliers, distributors, and end users in some cases, you know, if the volumes, you know, warrant that. You can also brand with us. You can use our platforms to either license our strains or build your own strains and do your own in-house manufacturing or outsource your manufacturing. Our partners like BRIG BIO or our partners like Proliant Health & Biologicals, this is the model that they're using. They're licensing our strains that we've already built to essentially optimize and then ultimately launch. You can build your own if you have proprietary assets. Again, we have, you know, multiple different companies coming to us, whether it's in the human pharmaceutical realms or in the bioindustrial realms. There's proprietary assets that they're looking for a better way or a different way to manufacture those products. That's essentially, you know, our third-party projects. These are all fully funded, you know, third-party projects that we use to develop, you know, assets for other people. That's really our strategy to drive revenue. Again, our focus is on the first two, buy and build, you know. Obviously we do, you know, have a lot of third-party partners that are looking to use the C1 or Dapibus platform for their own internal programs. As we look at the markets that we're going into, as I mentioned before, we have life sciences, food and nutrition, and bioindustrial. These are all very large and growing markets, but we're honing in on the areas where, like in life sciences, where our platform has the greatest advantages. In terms of being able to make large amounts of non-animal proteins and enzymes at lower cost than traditional platforms. It's the same in food and nutrition and bioindustrial. We're applying our platforms where we see the most value or where we feel we have a specific advantage. In life sciences, it's cell culture media and DNA and RNA molecular biology reagents. These are in the cell culture space, these are proteins and enzymes that are needed in large amounts, but also they're needed at lower cost because they're the building blocks for what you need to make monoclonal antibodies. You need cell culture media to feed CHO cells to make a monoclonal antibody. You need, for cell and gene therapy manufacturers, you need cell culture media at all different points throughout the process of manufacturing. These are extremely expensive products. Obviously, you know, they wanna make sure that their input proteins are at, you know, economical as possible, but still the highest quality. We feel we have an advantage in terms of our ability to scale, as well as our ability to produce high amounts of these more complex proteins. We're targeting that cell and gene therapy market, diagnostic reagents. In food and nutrition, non-animal dairy is a focus 'cause again, anytime you're competing with, you know, in the food and nutrition space, you're competing against plant or animal-based products. Obviously the dairy industry is, you know, extremely large and diverse. These are proteins that are gonna be needed in large amounts, but also need to be economically produced. That's why our focus has been on, you know, these higher value targeted proteins like alpha-lactalbumin. In addition, cell culture media for like the cultured meat market. We have some cross-category application in terms of life sciences and food and nutrition 'cause cultured meat or lab-grown meat is essentially using the same cell culture media components that are being used to grow CHO cells in the life sciences side. Again, this is where our Dapibus platform being able to produce larger amounts of lower cost proteins has specific advantages. We also have GRAS certification, which means it's generally recognized as safe for food and feed, which again gives us added safety, you know, in terms of producing products that can be used in food and nutrition applications. Then we have the bioindustrial segment. Really in that segment, while it's very broad, it's about a $150 billion segment, we're really focusing in on the cellulosics or biomass processing enzymes 'cause that's where we have the greatest advantages. It's where we have the most expertise, and that's essentially, you know, where our focus has been through our partnership with Fermbox Bio. Just to take a little bit of deeper dive into the life sciences, and again, you know, as I mentioned, we're focusing in on two key areas, cell culture media and DNA and RNA technologies. These are two of the fastest growing segments in cell and gene therapy as well as biologics manufacturing in the market today. Essentially, we have proof points that what we're doing is working. Proliant Health & Biologicals has launched AlbuFree DX, which is their first recombinant or non-animal protein that they're launching into the market. They launched it in the first quarter of this year. We've already received about $1.5 million in license and milestone fees, and now that they're launched, we'll begin to see the revenue benefits of the profit-sharing arrangement that we have with them. In addition to that, we're getting ready to launch our own version of human transferrin as well as bovine transferrin, and as I mentioned before, we've already started to commercialize growth factors. Again, this is an area where the strategy is starting to play out. We're starting to see revenues from it, and we're getting products launched. If you remember, we originally signed the deal with Proliant in 2024. We've gone from, you know, signing the deal with, you know, an upfront and access fee to actually, you know, starting to see revenues coming in in less than two years. That's the benefit of our shift in focus and our shift in strategy. In the DNA and RNA technologies as well, we're focusing in on that molecular biology reagent space, and these are products that you need to essentially manipulate DNA and RNA in cell and gene therapy applications and mRNA manufacturing. Things like DNase I, which cleaves DNA. It's kind of the building block of any DNA and RNA technology or DNA and RNA manufacturing. It's actually even used to clean equipment 'cause it can remove DNA. It's a very high demand enzyme, and we actually launched last week. We're currently accepting orders for DNase I, and again, our hope is that we continue to grow that franchise and with things like RNase inhibitors, DNA ligases. As I mentioned, we're starting to also wrap around other support programs like CRISPR that helps us optimize our proteins or enzymes a little more effectively. We have a license to be able to use our CRISPR technology. We've expanded our commercial reach in the Asia region with our partnership with Intralink, and we're starting to see the benefits of that as well in terms of, you know, potential orders as well as feasibility studies. It's really starting to take root, and we're really starting to finally see some of the success of our efforts and our shift in strategy. In terms of the pipeline, you know, where are we at? Obviously, you know, this slide is a slide from last year, but now we have updates from it. The human albumin through our partnership with Proliant, that is launched and on the market. DNase I, that is launched and on the market. Very soon coming up, you should see transferrin. Our growth factors have launched. We're also gonna have some of that cross-category, opportunities like alpha-lactalbumin. The human version of alpha-lactalbumin that's found in like human breast milk is a very attractive protein in the cell culture media space for cell culture media supplementation. Same with human lactoferrin. We have strains that produce both of those proteins that we're gonna be looking to launch in the research and reagent space, again, to round out our cell culture media portfolio. We've got multiple products that we're launching into the market. We're manufacturing them with our partner, Fermbox, in India. We have our manufacturing arm up and running, now we actually can produce inventory to bring into the market. It's a very exciting time for the life sciences space. In food and nutrition, late last year, we partnered with BRIG BIO to develop and commercialize bovine alpha-lactalbumin for the non-animal dairy space. We had some, you know, a small up front, and we have access to milestones as well as co-marketing rights available as well. We have the ability to start seeing some revenues fairly quickly from that partnership as well. We had our first bulk orders in cultured meat for growth factors, so we're starting to see some additional traction in there. I've also expanded our capability in that cultured meat segment through a partnership with Opes Diagnostics. They essentially sell cell culture media agents into the cultured meat segment. Right now we have multiple companies being sampled and are testing our products in their platforms right now. Equally as exciting is our commercial partner, Inzymes. We signed a commercialization and development agreement with them in 2023. They have launched bovine chymosin. We actually received a milestone for that. That was announced, I believe, two weeks ago. You know, essentially we're starting to see the benefits of all of what we've put into motion, you know, starting in 2022, and now these products are starting to hit the market. With Inzymes, we've already received almost $1.4 million now in license and milestone fees, and obviously we'll start to share the revenues once the products start to take hold in the market. We also are getting close on human alpha-lactalbumin in terms of finding a partner to help move that forward for the food and nutrition space, and we're in negotiations for other non-animal dairy proteins and enzymes as well. In the bioindustrial segment, we're continuing to, you know, benefit from our partnership with Fermbox Bio. They launched EN3ZYME, which is essentially one of the cellulosic enzyme for biomass processing. We're currently expanding our sampling capability in the Asia-Pacific region. There seems to be a high demand for cellulosic enzymes in that space, so we're starting to see some traction from our partnership with Intralink, not just in the life sciences space, but also in the bioindustrial space as well. We're exploring also some avenues for alternative uses for our cellulase enzymes, like in regenerative medicine. So again, we're looking to expand the applicability of these products beyond just the bioindustrial segment. We saw our first, you know, bulk order of cellulases last year through Fermbox. We expect to see some revenues from them in early 2026, and obviously we're looking to expand that. As far as the near-term product pipeline, as I mentioned, non-animal dairy enzymes, that has launched. The bovine chymosin has launched, and that's used in the cheesemaking process. We're also getting ready to launch transferrin as well as growth factors for cell culture media and the cultured meat space. Then the goal is that we have direct and licensed options for bovine and human alpha-lactalbumin made at a food grade. Also, we'll hopefully license them in 2026 and then start to see some commercial production as early as 2027. In the bioindustrial space, we've launched the cellulosic cocktails, but now we're starting to expand out into other areas like pulp and paper. Hyaluronidase, it's another enzyme that's used, you know, in cosmetics and different areas of the bioindustrial space. We're looking at opportunities to expand the portfolio there as well. This is essentially just what it looks like. How does this all come together in terms of revenue for Dyadic? Essentially, the goal is that we're going to have a base revenue that's going to be derived from the products that we sell. We already started to sell bovine growth factors and human growth factors in late 2025. We're launching DNase I and transferrin just now in 2026. We have other products like the cellulosics, the alpha-lactalbumin. These products are gonna start to layer in in late 2026, early 2027. The products are gonna be the base of our revenue 'cause we can control that. We can control the distributors, you know, or we can control the distributors we reach out to, and it also gives us the flexibility to license those strains as well. We don't just have to make it ourselves. We can license other people to make on our behalf. Again, it gives us the opportunity to essentially be self-directed. We're actually generating the products that we're selling into the market. Then layered on top of that, revenues from like our deal with Fermbox Bio. As I mentioned, we should be seeing some some early revenues from them in 2026. BRIG BIO, we expect to see some revenues coming in in late 2026, early 2027, but we're also gonna see some yearly access fees as well. Then enzymes, obviously they're launching as well, so Proliant has launched their AlbuFree DX. Those product and partnership revenues will layer on top of our product revenues. That's how essentially we're gonna get to a steady run rate, and obviously we're gonna look to expand and continue that growth curve. The goal is that the products serve as the base of the revenue and as we move forward, we get inflection points from licensing of either the technology or the products themselves to other partners. Obviously, we're also looking at strategic collaborations and partnerships as well. That's just a picture of how things, you know, we expect things to layer out and how things are starting to take hold 'cause we're starting to generate our own sales. Our partners are starting to generate their own sales, and now we've just got to continue to accelerate and expand the offering that we have in the market. I do wanna mention we're not walking away from the human therapeutic side, but it isn't the core focus for Dyadic, you know, as we move forward. Mark Emalfarb is essentially responsible for continuing these legacy R&D programs, and he's done a great job of continuing to solicit and bring in third-party projects. As mentioned, we have the Gates Foundation, we have CEPI, as well as the European Vaccine Hub that we're deeply embedded into. These programs will continue to validate the platform or validate the C1 platform for use in human and animal therapeutics, but they're not going to be a drag on us financially, and they're not going to be a drag on us from a revenue standpoint. These are all fully funded programs that we're gonna continue to obviously execute on, and we'll continue to solicit appropriate, you know, third-party programs in the human and animal space where it makes sense. These programs are continuing to be on target. They're generating significant data for us and as I mentioned, they're fully self-funded, so they're not going to, you know, again, take away our human resources or our capital resources as we move forward, and they can also serve as a, you know, potential revenue source. Really and I'll leave you with this. It's why now? We are at that inflection point. We've made the transition from R&D to commercial revenues. We're launching products. We've rebranded the organization. We've got a new website, new materials, a new outlook for Dyadic, and our engines are live. We are launching products. We are actually manufacturing products for sale in the market. We're looking to execute distribution agreements which will allow us to fill the channels and then obviously, you know, we collect the revenues as these orders get processed. We're starting to see the first, you know, the first revenues from that. Again, they're not, you know, again, not super significant right now, but again, we're starting to see revenues coming from direct sales. It's that near-term revenue that we're focused on, and it's non-therapeutic. These are products that we just have to be able to make at the quality level that's demanded by the market, and then we're able to launch them. They don't require FDA review. They don't require a full clinical program with clinical trials. These are products that can be commercialized quickly, and Proliant is evidence of that. They've launched their non-animal or their recombinant human albumin into the market. They launched three different grades. They're looking to expand that, you know, later this year, launching an even higher grade for cell culture media use. We're looking to continue to expand the portfolio of offerings through our partnerships as well as through our own internal programs. Our hope is that these legacy programs, you know, as we get to being self-sustaining through our own products as well as our partnership revenues, that these legacy wins actually provide that longer term momentum. We'll continue to validate the platform for use in human and animal therapeutics, but again, it's not going to be a drain on us in the short term. The revenue inflection is coming. We're starting to see the beginnings of those revenue streams coming in. All the engines are active, and now it's just about expanding it and signing these distribution agreements to get these products into the market, as well as getting people to, you know, continue to be interested in licensing the technology or licensing the strains as well. I believe that is it, and I will now move to Q&A. All right. Okay. With CRISPR-enabled strain optimization now embedded in your platforms, are there specific new product categories you can pursue that simply weren't feasible for Dyadic two or three years ago? It's a great question, and the answer is a little bit twofold. The answer is yes, because CRISPR enables us to optimize the targets a little more effectively. So it does open up avenues that we maybe weren't getting the best results in two or three years ago, 'cause it does improve, obviously, the potential for yield. It improves the speed at which we can move too. That's one of the other factors of using CRISPR is that it enables you to develop and optimize these strains more rapidly. It does give us new categories, you know, specifically the DNA and RNA molecular biology reagent space. It can truly help us, you know, accelerate into those areas as well. It's a great question. As you head into March 25 call for full-year 2025, do you feel the market is most underestimating about your 2026 and 2027 earning power? You know, it's a great question, and I actually feel like we're underestimated overall. The products are here. It's just about being able to make them and get them into the market. The technology produces proteins and enzymes. We know that. DuPont bought it for $75 million. The platform works. It's about applying it in the right way. And yes, I do feel we're underestimated, but at the same point in time, you know, it's kinda self-inflicted. We had, you know, many years, you know, just being honest, we had many years of, you know, underperformance where we weren't as focused on these, you know, driving a product or a near-term revenue. I think we underestimated the market as well in terms of its desire for a new expression technology. It's about positioning it where that technology can have the greatest advantage. Now I think we've done that, and I think our partners, you know, the licensing agreements that we've signed over the last couple of years have demonstrated that, and now they're launching products. We know that these products can be commercialized. We know that they are being commercialized, and now it's about accelerating that. I do feel we're underestimated, but at the same point in time, I can understand that. Okay. Great, exciting presentation, but I'm confused about how the strategy has really changed between the 2015 DuPont deal and now. Okay. That's on me then. Essentially, what's really changed is our focus is on products. Our focus is not on getting someone to essentially license the technology and license the platform for $10 million, and we do a few, you know, licensing deals, and then we try to do an exit. Obviously, we're looking at exit opportunities, but at the same point in time, we wanna make sure that we are focused on nearer term revenues. You know, essentially, as we look at the future, it's about understanding that products are what drive revenues and using our technology to make products that are not only, you know, validated in the space but are also in high demand. I just, you know, again, I think the main shift is that we are focused on generating our own revenues rather than expecting someone to come in and license the technology away from us. We are actually selling products now. I apologize, I'm not gonna be able to answer any more questions, and I'm running out of time, but I will respond via the platform here. I wanna thank everyone for their time today. I hope, you know, this was beneficial, and I really appreciate all of the great questions. I will get back to you and don't hesitate to reach out to me if you have any questions. Please reach out to me at jhazelton@dyadic.com, and always happy to talk to investors.