Plant genetic engineering company Evogene Ltd. (TASE:EVGN) swung to an operating loss and more than doubled its net loss for the first quarter, due to increased spending on R&D. The company uses biogenetics for improving traits of crops for agriculture and biofuels.
Evogene's revenue rose to $2.7 million for the first quarter from $2.4 million for the corresponding quarter of 2009.
Evogene increased its total loss to $3.7 million ($0.14 per share) for the first quarter from $1.4 million for the corresponding quarter. The loss includes a non-cash financing expense related to options revaluations.
The company posted an operating loss of $181,000 for the first quarter compared with an operating profit of $624,000 for the corresponding quarter.
The main reason for the swing to loss was the increase in spending on R&D to $940,000 for the first quarter from $340,000 for the corresponding quarter. The focus of this effort is on in-house projects to develop innovative proprietary core technologies and on the increase in manpower to support these projects.
Evogene president CEO Ofer Haviv said, "During the first quarter, we continued as planned to expand our R&D capabilities, primarily on our core technologies, which are considered innovative, and which we consider to be our future growth engines: Athlete, a gene discovery platform, which underpins most of our current activity; RePack for characterizing biological control mechanisms that express genes; and EvoBreed for integrating important genome tools during the classic fostering process. We also made progress on our alternative fuels project, which currently focuses on developing the castor-oil plant as a raw material for biodiesel and bio-jet fuel."
Evogene's share price rose 0.9% by midday today to NIS 17.26, giving a market cap of NIS 530 million. Monsanto Company (NYSE: MON) is the company's largest shareholder with an 11% stake.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on May 13, 2010
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