Projected cost savings of about $10 million on annualized run-rate basis, expected to reduce cash use by about 20%
San Diego, CA (October 21, 2024) - Cibus, Inc. an agricultural technology company that develops plant traits to license to seed companies for royalties, announced a restructuring and cost reduction initiatives, including a reduction in force (“RIF”), to optimize the company’s business and cost structure in alignment with its strategic priority to advance its nearest-term commercial opportunities.
The company expects these actions, along with other initiatives, to generate cost savings of approximately $10 million on an annualized run-rate basis. When these and other initiatives are fully implemented by early 2025, the company expects them to translate to a reduction in monthly cash use by approximately 20%.
These initiatives are a result of the company’s realigned organization focused on its herbicide resistant traits in Rice, continuing development of its Soybean platform and leveraging its family of multi-crop traits that include disease tolerance in Canola and Winter Oilseed Rape.
The Company will also continue to opportunistically pursue partner-funded projects. The RIF is expected to result in one-time charges for accrued vacation and severance of approximately $0.35 million in the fourth quarter of 2024.
“This restructuring is a necessary step for the Company in our continued transformation from an R&D-focused company to the first commercial stage gene editing company in agriculture with the support from top-tier global seed companies," states Rory Riggs, Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Cibus. "Our streamlined organization will allow us to more efficiently focus our efforts on executing on our product launches with our herbicide resistant traits in Rice and traits for pod shatter reduction in Canola, while maintaining the ability to capitalize on our continued positive progress developing our Soybean platform and advancing our traits for Sclerotinia resistance and herbicide tolerance HT2 trait.”
“I would like to express our appreciation to each of our impacted colleagues," Riggs adds. "They have each made meaningful contributions to the development of Cibus and we are committed to supporting them through this transition.”
About Cibus
Cibus (Nasdaq: CBUS) is a leading independent plant trait company that develops and licenses plant traits to seed companies for royalties. Cibus is not a seed company, but rather a technology company that uses its proprietary gene editing technology to develop and commercialize plant traits at a fraction of the time and cost of conventional breeding. Cibus’ strategy is focused on commercializing productivity traits for the world’s major row crops with large acreage such as: canola, rice, soybean, corn and wheat. The Company targets traits that help manage farmers’ seed productivity and sustainability challenges such as weeds, disease, and insects. The United Nations estimates that the impacts from these challenges cost the global economy approximately $300 billion annually. Cibus has a current portfolio of six traits, three of which are in commercial development and four of which are multi-crop traits associated with weed management and disease, including Sclerotinia resistance and a new weed management trait which are in advanced greenhouse and field trial stages.