Amyris - Q1 2023
May 9, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Welcome to the Amyris 1st quarter 2023 financial results conference call. This call is being webcast live on the Events page of the Investor section of the Amyris website at amyris.com. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. You may listen to the webcast replay of this call by going to the Investor section of the Amyris website. I would now like to turn the call over to Han Kieftenbeld, Chief Financial Officer of Amyris. Please go ahead.
Han Kieftenbeld (CFO)
Good afternoon, everyone, thank you for joining us today. With me on today's call is John Melo, President and Chief Executive Officer, as well as Eduardo Alvarez, Chief Operating Officer, who will participate in the Q&A session today. We issued our results in a press release. The current report on Form 8-K, furnished with respect to our press release, is available on our website, amyris.com, in the Investor section, as well as on the SEC's website. The slides accompanying this presentation can also be found on the website and were posted today for your convenience. Please note that on this call you will hear discussions of non-GAAP financial measures, including, but not limited to, core revenue, gross profit, cash operating expense, and adjusted EBITDA.
Reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure are contained in the financial summary section slides of the presentation and the press release distributed today. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements about future events and circumstances, including Amyris's outlook for 2023 and beyond. Amyris's goals and strategic priorities, anticipated transactions, and other future milestones, as well as market opportunities, growth prospects, and Fit to Win actions. These statements are based on management's current expectations and actual results, and future events may differ materially due to risks and uncertainties, including those detailed from time to time in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Form 10-K for fiscal year 2022. Amyris disclaims any obligation to update information contained in these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.
I'll now turn the call over to John.
John Melo (President and CEO)
Thanks, Han. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I'll provide an update on our business performance and our key priorities for this year. Han will provide an update on our financial performance, and I'll recap before we turn to Q&A, which is where I hope we spend most of our time during this call. We delivered a solid 1st quarter with revenue of $56 million, well ahead of our guidance of $50 million. We also delivered an $18 million or 29 percentage point improvement in gross profit and a $36 million or a 24% improvement in operating expenses versus the 4th quarter of 2022. Our return on marketing dollar invested was around $10 of revenue for $1 of media spend. This compared to our target of $3 of revenue for every media dollar invested.
In absolute terms, media spend in the 1st quarter of 2023 was about 25% of media spend in the prior year quarter. This was our best progress versus prior quarters, and our choices were driven with focus on efficiency and effectiveness of spend, as well as by our liquidity constraints. Our non-GAAP consumer gross margin as a percentage of revenue was 56%, which compared to 60% in the prior year quarter due to product and channel mix. Our non-GAAP technology access gross margin as a percentage of revenue was 24%, which is compared to 27% in the 1st quarter of 2022, and was a significant improvement sequentially of about 72 percentage points due to higher collaboration revenue.
We plan to turn the various lessons we've learned from operating with a tight budget and lower media services into much more efficient media spend opposite the consumer revenue generated. Besides media spend, we also significantly reduced inbound freight expense, including air freight, to $2.4 million from $8.5 million in the 1st quarter of 2022. We are focused on making our business Fit to Win, which is really our path to operating profitability. Fit to Win includes a competitive cost base, delivering the most efficient and effective marketing, and ensuring we have the lowest cost to produce and serve across our consumer business.
Fit to Win also includes delivering the strongest revenue growth of our peers, having a focused and well-performing portfolio of assets, and having the right capability and culture to enable us to make the planet healthier while operating a sustainable company that is here for many generations to come. We are making good progress, and we are clear that we need to do more. We are in the process of completing a strategic review of our cost base and liquidity, including the effectiveness of our operating model. We are focused on getting to the right balance of cost and growth performance, while at the same time reducing our overhead and aligning our investment in technology and consumer capability to execute on our advantaged offer and meet the critical needs of consumers and our partners.
On April 3, we closed the Givaudan transaction and received $200 million in upfront proceeds. This is our fourth strategic transaction since the start of 2020. These transactions represent a strong track record of execution of our go-to-market strategy for our ingredients and core technology. We are world leaders in developing, scaling, and producing clean, sustainable chemistry through biofermentation. The molecules we produce are the science inside thousands of consumer products impacting millions of consumers daily and making our planet healthier. We are the science and production of this chemistry. Our partners are the market leaders in formulating with and selling to companies that need our differentiated molecules and chemistry. Our technology access business is focused on generating income from the development of molecules, from the licensing of the marketing rights, and from the long-term manufacturing, leveraging our biofermentation capability.
From the start of 2020, our four transactions for nine molecules have generated in excess of $800 million of value from upfront cash and earn-out payments, not including margin contribution from long-term manufacturing. This represents an average of nearly $90 million of licensing value per molecule. The Givaudan transaction is the most valuable molecule deal we have completed. The strategic transactions are for focused marketing rights, like the sale of squalane for use in the cosmetics end markets or farnesene for the use of a specific molecule like Vitamin E. Each molecule can serve additional applications and end markets, and we have retained the rights for all the markets outside the specific license that was contracted. We expect to continue to build on this business model, we continue to scale and commercialize new molecules.
We have over 30 molecules in our current pipeline when including the various farnesene molecules and end markets we are currently testing and developing. ectoine and HDF, also known as hydrogenated difarnesene, are two great examples. ectoine is an excellent molecule that has been around in very limited quantity and at a high cost. Like many of our molecules, we are able to make this molecule abundantly available directly from fermentation. This is a molecule that delivers great performance in skincare. It helps the skin retain moisture. It is one of the hero ingredients in our Stripes brand and is starting to get attention from consumers. We are starting to see European brands promote the use and performance of ectoine as a key ingredient. Even more interesting is our latest breakthrough innovation from our farnesene building block, HDF, or hydrogenated difarnesene.
It's expected to be a game changer for skincare, hair care, color cosmetics, and personal care markets. It has almost three times the viscosity of squalane at about the same weight. It is the perfect combination of moisture retention, gloss, and cushion. It is a great replacement for some of the palm oil alternatives in the market. Initial feedback from formulators and some of the leading beauty companies is that it could potentially outperform squalane. See, it's a molecule that makes formulas perform better, and because of its weight, it can deliver a formula for a lower cost than is currently being formulated. These are great examples of what's in our pipeline and good evidence of our focus on markets where we can really win while delivering the best science and chemistry for a healthier planet.
Beyond our existing pipeline, and process of commercialization, we are engaged with some of the world's leading companies in beauty and personal care that are committed to clean, sustainable chemistry in their products. Many companies have public commitments to sustainable chemistry and sourcing, and Lab-to-Market technology can help them achieve their goals, which we expect to manifest itself in growth in our collaboration programs and revenue. We leverage our Lab-to-Market technology across 3 dimensions. Innovation. We develop, scale, and produce some of the world's leading molecules sustainably. As said earlier, HDF is a perfect example of a molecule that we're in the process of commercializing within the next 12 months. Our consumer. We market our brands to demonstrate efficacy and stimulate consumer demand through tangible product solutions and a superior consumer experience.
Thirdly, our technology access, where we partner with the world's leading suppliers to formulate with and sell our ingredients into thousands of products. Our consumer brands, our technology access activity, and our innovation and support infrastructure all play a role in Amyris's business model. We are striving to optimize each of these activities in terms of operating and financial performance by way of benchmarking and to align on our investments with the affordability threshold. Our liquidity constraints are very much in focus. We have three key activities that are in process. First, we're establishing a biomanufacturing JV that would provide Amyris an estimated $50 million-$100 million in proceeds and support the working capital needs of ingredient manufacturing, as well as provide the necessary CapEx to build our next fermentation plant. We are in active negotiation.
The long-term objective is to design the joint venture to provide a more scalable capital structure with access to working capital to sustain the demand for more biomanufacturing capacity. Secondly, we're in the process of the sale of non-core assets. This relates to certain consumer brands and is expected to generate up to $100 million in proceeds. This will result in a focused consumer portfolio of five to six consumer brands that have an attractive growth and margin profile and are leaders in their respective categories. Our third activity is advancing the proceeds of up to $350 million from future performance-based earn-outs and milestone payments related to our strategic transactions. These are the transactions that are already complete. Each of these are in process and are critical components of our plan to self-fund our business.
In summary, the 1st quarter demonstrated our changed approach to balanced revenue delivery with a lower cost profile, resulting in sequentially improved gross profit, operating expense, and adjusted EBITDA. We clearly have much more to do to make this sustainable and ensure that our business model can successfully operate as a result of a much improved cash conversion cycle and lower operating costs. Our consumer demand remains very strong. As we transition to stable operations at Barra Bonita, we have a very strong year of ingredients, product supply, and revenue ahead of us. We basically are contracted to sell all that we have capacity to produce this year for our ingredients business. We continue to create the world's leading sustainable chemistry from biofermentation. Our Lab-to-Market technology platform is leading in its ability to develop, scale, and produce clean, sustainable chemistry.
We have great commercial partners that are leaders in their sectors. They recognize the value Amyris brings now and well into the future. Our Fit to Win agenda, the strategic review, and our business plan are focused on setting a clear path to self-funding our business while executing on our strategy of continued strong growth in our chosen end markets. To do so, we are working on a multifaceted agenda, including completing the manufacturing JV, the divestment of non-core assets, and the realization of earn-outs of our various completed strategic partnerships. We are focused on delivering further cost reductions and aligning our overhead with the needs of our operating business to accelerate our path to positive adjusted EBITDA. Our outlook and guidance for the year remains unchanged. Let me now turn the call to Han.
Han Kieftenbeld (CFO)
Thanks, John. Let me proceed with discussing the quarter's financials, starting with revenue. Core revenue, which includes consumer and technology access revenue and excludes strategic transactions and other, decreased 3% to $56.1 million when compared to the 1st quarter of 2022 revenue. Our consumer business declined 1% to $34.2 million. The decrease in consumer revenue was primarily driven by lower Biossance revenue due to lower marketing and media spend and out-of-stock product, offset in part by the launch of our 4U by Tia brand at Walmart, as well as increased MenoLabs direct to consumer revenue. Our consumer business in Q1 2023 was about 48% direct to consumer and 52% with retail partners. The split one year ago was 57% direct to consumer and 43% with retail partners.
We believe the shift away from DTC was driven by lower Q1 2023 marketing and media spend due to certain liquidity constraints. Technology access revenue of $21.9 million decreased 5%. Technology access revenue include ingredient product revenue of $8.9 million, which decreased 18% compared to Q1 2022, reflecting continuing supply and working capital constraints as the business transitioned from higher cost toll manufacturing to lower cost internal sourcing from our new fermentation plant in Barra Bonita, Brazil. R&D collaboration revenue of $3.6 million increased relative to the prior year, with growth driven by several new contract research programs. Technology license revenue from earn-outs totaled nine and a half million, which included a $3.4 million favorable true-up related to 2022 activity. This brings me to gross profit.
As I mentioned during our 4th quarter earnings call, we are introducing non-GAAP gross profit, which more completely presents our margin performance considering all aspects of cost of goods sold. A reconciliation of this non-GAAP measure is included in the tables to our earnings release. Non-GAAP gross profit was $11.6 million or 21% of revenue, compared to $10.6 million or 18% of revenue in Q1 of 2022. Non-GAAP gross profit increased by $1 million and was 300 basis points higher as a % of revenue than in the prior year. This was primarily due to lower freight expense as well as favorable mix of higher margin revenue. We experienced significantly higher freight spending in 2022, particularly due to increased inbound airfreight rates and volume to support our growing consumer brand revenue, as well as the importation of ingredients intermediate product.
We were very pleased with our progress to reduce costs in these areas, yielding a reduction in inbound freight from $8.5 million in Q1 2022 to $2.4 million in the 1st quarter of 2023. We expect most of these freight and logistics expenditures to operate at a lower level compared to 2022 due to the commissioning of the new Brazil fermentation plant and our plan to transition to Brazilian source components and manufacturing for our largest consumer brands. Before I move to discussing operating expense, I want to spend a moment on our consumer portfolio. In the 1st quarter of 2023, we entered into a JV and brand collaboration agreement with Tia Mowry, launching 4U by Tia in January, a new clean haircare brand.
The brand collaboration agreement with actress and celebrity Tia Mowry will market this new haircare line to women of color using clean ingredients. In connection with our Fit to Win strategy, the company decided to exit the EcoFabulous brand and reorganize the Beauty Labs business during the 1st quarter of 2023. Accordingly, we booked a $28.5 million favorable non-cash change in the fair value of acquisition-related contingent consideration, as well as asset impairments totaling $95.4 million. We also incurred a $4.2 million inventory write-off related to the EcoFabulous brand, which was adjusted out when calculating gross profit. I'd like to touch on operating expense. Non-GAAP cash operating expense of $112.8 million was 4% lower than Q1 2022 and 24% lower than the 4th quarter of 2022.
This was primarily due to lower marketing and media spend related to working capital constraints. In Q1 2023, more than $1 million of cost savings resulted from headcount reduction initiatives, and approximately $14 million resulted from lower consumer marketing expenses versus the previous run rate. This was mostly related to spend on paid media such as Google and Meta and related agencies. We started the quarter with a cash balance of $71 million and raised $42 million, primarily through a bridge loan to fund the purchase of our Aprinnova assets in April 2023. We used $101 million during the quarter on operational adjusted EBITDA, offset in part by favorable working capital leverage of $17 million, driven by action taken with suppliers to improve terms and our cash conversion cycle. We also closed out the quarter with $17 million of cash on-hand.
Before I discuss our quarter-on-quarter progress, in connection with our ongoing strategic review, as previously communicated on April 24th, we are focused on cost efficiency, capital structure, and liquidity required to fund the business. We updated our going concern disclosure, as you will see in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q, and we have signed forbearance agreements with the company's lenders, Foris Ventures, LLC, Perrara Ventures, LLC, and DSM Finance B.V., related to the maturity of an aggregate $92.5 million of debt principal. The lenders have agreed to forbear from exercising any rights and remedies with respect to certain payment defaults until June 23rd, 2023. As described in our 10-Q, our current cash position, as well as short-term debt payments due, raises substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern within the one-year period.
As referenced earlier, we are actively working on plans that are intended to address this going concern. As it relates to our Q1 performance, we have sequentially reduced cash use for operating and investing activities, beginning with $199.7 million in Q1 2022 through $94.8 million in the 1st quarter of 2023, as the result of a focused effort on cost containment and the need to navigate liquidity constraints. We used a total of $90 million for operating activities, which includes all our cost of goods sold, operating expense, and working capital needs. We used a total of $5 million for investing activities, all of which was related to capital expenditures for R&D facilities, as well as the construction of our Barra Bonita fermentation plant.
We have worked hard on reducing our use of cash by taking various steps, including bringing in proceeds from a strategic transaction. Let me summarize, John referenced this earlier, the two transactions that we recently completed in early April, given their importance to cash flow. We completed the acquisition of an additional 49% of our JV in Aprinnova on April 3rd. We paid $49 million to bring our ownership percentage in Aprinnova up to 99%. Also, on April 3rd, we closed on our transaction with Givaudan to license certain cosmetic ingredients business and received $200 million up from cash and expect to receive up to $150 million in performance-based earn-out payments over the three-year period. We are delivering on our strategy to provide technology access in a meaningful way to partners that are sector leaders and to bring in meaningful cash.
Also, John described three activities with a view to bring in funding. Each of these are in process and are critical components of our plan to fund the business. With that, let me turn the call back to John.
John Melo (President and CEO)
Thanks, Han. Before we move to Q&A, let me confirm that our current outlook for the full year, including revenue guidance provided on March 15th, 2023, remains unchanged. We are focused on and committed to improving our cost structure, making strategic portfolio choices, improving our cash conversion cycle, and delivering on the transactions that self-fund our business. With that, Kate, can you please help us go to Q&A?
Operator (participant)
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speaker phone, please pick up your handset before pressing the key. To withdraw from the question queue, please press star then two. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question is from Susan Anderson of Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
Susan Anderson (Equity Research Analyst)
Hi. Good evening. Thanks for taking my questions. I was wondering if you can maybe talk about Fit to Win savings. I guess, did you get any in the quarter? Are you still expecting the $150 million annualized savings to flow through this year? If so, how should we expect that to kind of flow through throughout the year?
John Melo (President and CEO)
Susan, thank you for being on. This is John. I'll start answering that. We did see a few of the activities in Fit to Win flow through in the quarter. We saw some of the improvements in our cost of goods. We especially as Barra Bonita continued to come on-line. We saw a significant reduction in our shipping costs, specifically the inbound shipping costs and air shipping. We still expect that for the full year, we'll realize $150 million of savings in our baseline of 2022, which was the basis of the $150 million. I'll let Han add if he has anything else on this.
Han Kieftenbeld (CFO)
Yeah, two things. One is what I said in my in my remarks just a moment ago, is the we saw the initial savings from reducing some of the headcount, particularly as it relates to the simplified leadership structure. I mentioned $1 million there. Then also, as it relates to some of the media spend, as we said, part of the driver was our liquidity constraints, and part of the driver was certainly some of the choices we made in terms of where to spend, you know, the investments opposite the revenue opportunity.
John Melo (President and CEO)
Thanks, Han.
Susan Anderson (Equity Research Analyst)
Great. Thanks. Just on the top line for this year, you talked about reiterating the guide. I guess, for the core top line, I think that that would imply sales growing in the low to mid 20% range. I guess, can you talk about the difference between the consumer and tech access growth for the year? Should we expect that to ramp back up to double-digit for consumer as we go through the year? Or should the quarters be pretty equal? Thanks.
John Melo (President and CEO)
I'll start in and let Han talk about the quarterly cadence. Look, I can tell you what we're seeing already in the 2nd quarter, which is double-digit growth in our biggest brands as we really learned a lot in the 1st quarter about which one of our media investments worked best and how we got the best return for the media dollar spend, the limited media dollar spend that we did in the 1st quarter. From those learnings, we scaled, and we've activated our most effective channels. And I can tell you just on a week-to-week basis as we've looked at May versus April versus March, we're up 17% across several of our channels for our two biggest brands.
We're also seeing a significant impact in retail as we've increased some of the channel investment for media, which is what we expected. We expect as we invest marketing online, we expect to see an impact in retail. We've had several of our brands, including our biggest brand, that have had some of their second and third biggest weeks in history during the month of April. We're seeing Pipette actually at retail, especially at Target. It's almost like every week, we're setting a new record at Target for Pipette sales, and it's also performing extremely well with Walmart as a retail partner.
Back to the question, we see top line being in the double-digit growth back to where we'd expect, and really in line with the guidance we've given. I think our focus this year is doing what we did in the 1st quarter and hitting or beating our guidance as we go through the year. In a good place on consumer. As it relates to the ingredient side, the ingredient side is all about the uptime and the effectiveness of Barra Bonita. I can tell you, since the beginning of this quarter, Barra Bonita has been operating very well, been stable, and we expect to hit our guidance and, you know, that really is based on selling out all that we make out of Barra Bonita this year.
On track for both on the top line, consumer definitely on the double-digit growth track, and hitting the numbers that we'd expect and the same thing on the ingredient side. Han, anything about the cadence that you'd like to talk about?
Han Kieftenbeld (CFO)
First off, on the magnitude, I think you asked about the year, that's kind of what we said last time was between 95%-100% on the full year. That obviously included the strategic transaction that at the time was in progress. We now have completed, obviously, we can confirm that $200 million is revenue that will be recognized in the 2nd quarter, given that that is now complete. The other thing I would say, excluding that, you mentioned, you know, somewhat low 20s as a percentage for the core business. We have not specifically broken out in our guidance consumer versus tech access, it's in that range that we previously talked about.
Susan Anderson (Equity Research Analyst)
Okay, great. If I could just add one more follow-up on Barra Bonita. I guess, where are you at with moving your production there? How many lines are up and running now? How much of your production have you been able to shift out of third parties into the plant so far?
John Melo (President and CEO)
Thanks, Susan. Look, we have five lines in total at Barra Bonita. Three of which are what I'd call large scale lines, 200 cubic meter tanks. Those three lines represent, for those of you who were around during Brotas, the equivalent of Brotas capacity. All three of those lines are up and running. We have moved, I would say about 90% of our production, with the exception of farnesene out of contract sites into Barra Bonita this year. Farnesene is still being produced at Brotas, and we're still purchasing quite a bit of farnesene out of our DSM partnership. If you think about where we are, a very small footprint, one or two molecules at our Spain contract facility that we still will need some production this year.
The majority of all of our other molecules, at Barra Bonita and then some farnesene, probably around 50%-60% of our farnesene, coming out of the Brotas facility with DSM. I hope that helps answer the question about where our production is coming from this year.
Susan Anderson (Equity Research Analyst)
Yeah, that's very helpful. Thanks so much. Good luck the rest of the year.
John Melo (President and CEO)
Thanks, Susan.
Han Kieftenbeld (CFO)
Thanks, Susan.
Operator (participant)
The next question is from Korinne Wolfmeyer of Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.
Korinne Wolfmeyer (Equity Research Analyst)
Hey, good afternoon, guys, and thanks for taking the question. First, I'd like to touch a little bit more on what went on with Biossance in the quarter. I know in the last question, you talked about what you pulled back a little bit of marketing spend. Can you just dive into what was the driver behind that? Was it just kind of to trial out and see, you know, how much you really were requiring to keep the brand afloat? Now as you go forward, you know, how are you thinking about the marketing spend for all the other brands? Additionally, on the Biossance, I think you mentioned some out-of-stock product. Can you just expand on what was going on there as well? Thank you.
John Melo (President and CEO)
Sure. Thank you for being on, Korinne. A couple of points. First, regarding media spend, you know the industry very well. Regarding media spend, we went almost completely dark with media spend for Biossance in the 1st quarter. That obviously had a significant impact on growth. The good news is, even with that media spend turned off, we actually really deliver quite a bit of revenue from our whole brand portfolio. That is across all the portfolio, by the way. I think in total, we spent $3 million, I can tell you that that was spread, I can tell you that Biossance got, you know, a very small piece of that. Again, call it almost completely dark for the quarter in media spend.
It was a combination of things. First, you know, we were not in the, we didn't have the liquidity that we could actually allocate the investment across the brand, so we had to make some hard choices. Secondly, as we were making those choices, we were very focused on what is the impact by channel. We tested performance across various different channels. By channels, I mean marketing channels. I mean, what we did in paid search, what we did in paid social, what we did in affiliates, what we did with email, what we did with text, and what we did with any other online media investment that we were making during the quarter. We now have a very good sense of the impact of dollars spent by channel.
We delivered $10 for every $1 spent in the quarter. We're now very confident that our target of $3 of revenue for every $1 of spend is absolutely in line for our portfolio, knowing that a brand like Biossance actually has the potential for a lot more than that, as much as $5-$6 of revenue for every $1 invested. I think the second factor, which we may have not talked about much, was really out of stocks. Out of stocks had a significant impact on revenue across our brands. The issue was really that quite a few of our brands, Pipette, Costa Brazil, JVN, Biossance, just to name a few, and then Rose Inc, actually was out of stock in several of their top 10 sellers.
Combination of out of stock and what we saw in paid media. We can verify that as we put product back in stock during the beginning of the 2nd quarter, we've seen the consumer come right back to the product. As we started activating the channels, we're actually, I could tell you in the first couple of weeks or the first, really call it the first five, six days of May, we could see all the marketing channels starting to perform at levels that were equivalent to when we shut them down during the 1st quarter. I hope that helps give you some color as to what happened across the brands, what happened in the channels, and then what happened with out of stocks.
Korinne Wolfmeyer (Equity Research Analyst)
Yeah, that's very helpful. Just to follow up on that, what was the reasoning behind the out of stocks? Just quickly on gross margin, can you just touch a little bit of, you know, on what caused that big decrease this quarter and what's kind of like the proper run rate to think about going forward? Thank you.
John Melo (President and CEO)
Sure. The majority of the out-of-stocks were again, delayed payments or liquidity, where we had the product produced, the vendors were waiting for payment. That's why when we received our funding from the Givaudan transaction at the beginning of the 2nd quarter, we were able to immediately get the product out and shipped. It wasn't that the product wasn't made. In many cases, the product was actually made, and waiting to be shipped from the supplier side on a lot of the CMOs that we operate. That's the product out-of-stock side. I think regarding the second part of your question, you wanna repeat it for me, Korinne? Margin, yeah.
Korinne Wolfmeyer (Equity Research Analyst)
Yeah, just on growth margin. Thank you.
John Melo (President and CEO)
Yeah, I could tell you know, part of the gross margin mix is how the brands performed. Several of our brands, Pipette being one of them, actually had very strong performance during the quarter and is continuing very strong. When Pipette performs this way and several of our other brands that have a lower margin profile and our higher margin brands don't contribute at the level that we'd expect, we see that kind of shift in margin. Again, I can tell you where we are in April and what I'd expect for the rest of the year is for us to operate at the level we expect for consumer gross margin, especially with the Fit to Win activities.
What we see there is somewhere around the 63%-65% gross margin, for, and this is the adjusted gross margin number we tracked, at the consumer, operating level, is what we'd expect for the rest of the year in consumer.
Han Kieftenbeld (CFO)
Let me add to that a little bit, Korinne. channel, I made a comment, I think, in the analysis that we had more on the retail side than compared to year ago quarter on the DTC side. That plays into the margin profile too. As John said, you know, it's really the brand mix, where we have Pipette step up, for an example, relative to the rest of the portfolio, but also the new brand 4U by Tia, that is in placed in Walmart. You know, there's a slightly different margin profile compared to some of the other brands.
Korinne Wolfmeyer (Equity Research Analyst)
Super helpful. Thank you.
John Melo (President and CEO)
Thank you, Korinne.
Operator (participant)
The next question. I'm sorry. The next question is from Colin Rusch of Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.
Colin Rusch (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
Thanks so much, guys. Appreciate the detail on the channel. You know, as you look at, the pricing strategy as you have more product, you know, could you talk a little bit about the potential to be a little bit more aggressive around pricing as you have a little bit more product available?
John Melo (President and CEO)
Colin, thank you for being on. Just to clarify, when you say be a bit more aggressive on pricing, you mean?
Colin Rusch (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
Yeah. Pricing to consumers on some of these products. You know, obviously it looks like there's a fairly resilient level of demand. Just wanna see if there's a way for you guys to start raising prices and driving a little bit more cash flow through the channel.
John Melo (President and CEO)
Yeah, no, thank you for the question, Colin. We have put through some price increases that I think have gone very well. We are currently and actually pretty consistently looking at elasticity and what kind of pricing opportunity we have. I would say the answer is yes, we've already done some of that, and you wouldn't be surprised if we would do more in the future. We see resilience in the brands as we've been able to push pricing increases through.
Colin Rusch (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
That's super helpful. Then just with the Fit to Win program, you know, you guys have really built, you know, the best team in the space around synthetic biology and certainly have the leading platform here. You know, I'm curious how you think about, you know, editing the organization and how to optimize, you know, cash flow while maintaining the technology leadership.
John Melo (President and CEO)
Look, I think, you know, as part of the review that we're doing, we're looking at costs obviously across our entire business. Without question, there are places in our business that aren't as competitive as we think they need to be. You can imagine we are gonna be optimizing or continuously optimizing costs across the business. We're also very conscious that some of the innovation, especially our technology leadership and how we've organized, how we do the bioengineering, we think is deeply strategic. We think it's one of the most productive, if not the most productive, bioengineering platform in the world. You know, I would tell you some of the early information we're seeing in the assessments we've done is indicating that.
I think what you can expect is that where we go for continued cost improvement and cost cuts, will be very focused on where we're not competitive and where we have significant opportunity. I can tell you that on the R&D side, I see us as very competitive, especially on productivity. We have significant demand that we're dealing with there, especially as we expand the number of collaborations we do as more and more global companies are approaching us, to develop and scale molecules for them as they try to meet their objectives around sustainable chemistry. I hope that helps kind of share how we're looking at the cost base.
Colin Rusch (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
That is helpful. Thanks so much, guys.
John Melo (President and CEO)
Thanks, Colin.
Operator (participant)
The next question is from Amit Dayal of H.C. Wainwright. Please go ahead.
Han Kieftenbeld (CFO)
For the, debt that's coming due.
John Melo (President and CEO)
Hey, Amit, your line is not coming through very well. Can you perhaps start your question again? No, you're not coming through.
Operator (participant)
The next question is from Rachel Vatnsdal of JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Rachel Vatnsdal (Equity Research Analyst)
Great. Thanks for taking the question. My main question is just around some of this cash balance and cash burn guidance for the year. You guys exited the quarter with $17 million of cash and equivalent. Can you just walk us through what are the incremental puts and takes for cash use for the rest of the year in terms of some of these upcoming loans that you have? Also, the commentary in the forbearance, can you just walk us through kind of what that means on a more granular level? Are you just pushing out payments towards that June timeframe that you flagged? What are your updated expectations in terms of total cash burn for the year?
John Melo (President and CEO)
I'll give you a high level, a high level answer, and then I'll let Han chip in. I think in general, we've got quite a bit of work going on in really planning out our cash uses for the year, so it's probably something we're not prepared to go into a lot of detail on. At a high level, think of it as, again, at the beginning of the quarter, of the 2nd quarter, we brought in $200 million from the transaction. Han talked through in detail some of the uses of that, which was really the large or the buyout of Aprinnova, the 49%, and then paying down some of the past dues we had and then operating.
With all that, you know, we're very focused on continuing to support our operations and execute on our strategy. As we look ahead, we've talked about some of the big buckets that we see as sources of cash coming in. The sale of the non-core assets, the manufacturing JV that we said would generate $50 million-$100 million in proceeds to us. We also talked about what we're doing in advancing earn-outs from our three major transactions, the Givaudan transaction, the DSM transaction, and the Ingredion transaction, which is actually a milestone payment. Those are really where we're going for our sources of cash. We talked about some of the big infusion that came in at the beginning of the quarter.
We're obviously working very hard with Fit to Win, and the review we're doing now to ensure we're really getting our cost base right and looking for as much improvement as we can out of our operations to really minimize our cash outflow. That's really about the way I would think through the year at this point for cash. You asked about the debt. Look, I know we announced the forbearance. The forbearance is with two long-term shareholders that have been very supportive of the company. Our focus with the forbearance is to really provide adequate time to really negotiate that debt for a longer-term structure that works in line with our cash flow and our capital needs. That's the way you should think about it.
We're working through that in detail. We're working through it with partners that have been long-term shareholders of the company. We expect to get that resolved during the forbearance period. In addition to that, we're executing the transactions we've said as a way to really support our liquidity needs and ensure that we could self-fund our business as we go forward. Han, anything you wanna throw?
Han Kieftenbeld (CFO)
I think that's right. It's the two parts really to how we're thinking about it, and I won't repeat what John Melo said as it relates to the more strategic, bigger initiatives. What shouldn't be overlooked is the other part, which is the day-to-day tackling and blocking that we do. You know, that's just managing liquidity on a daily basis. We're also continuing to make operational improvements. You know, we're talking about working capital, for example, looking at inventory, of course, how we engage with vendors. Also, you know, just good practices as it relates to collections on the receivable side. There's a lot of the, I wouldn't call them low-hanging fruit because some of them are certainly hard work, but, you know, things that we are focused on all around.
360 degree on all the things that we do every day, and that's part of the review that John had referenced earlier. It's an extension of Fit to Win and doing more of that, and that's really what we're focused on. Both the day-to-day as well as some of the bigger things that will help us fund the company.
Rachel Vatnsdal (Equity Research Analyst)
Great. As a follow-up, just on some of your comments around licensing and some of the pull forward that you're trying to do there. It looks like licensing revenue was almost $10 million in the quarter. You noted that about a third of that was related to a true-up from the prior period. Can you walk us through what you're assuming for licensing revenues heading into the later half of the year? What level, you know, of visibility do you have, and should we expect any more true-ups like you had this quarter? Thank you.
John Melo (President and CEO)
Yeah. Again, I'll give a high-level view and Han can add. We have not disclosed the specific cadence of how the licensing revenue comes in. What I can do is point to what to expect based on what's been announced, right? So we know we have quarterly revenue coming in from the DSM earn-out and based on our production plan for the year, you can expect that to continue quarter-on-quarter, assuming keeping with our production plan. I think secondly, there is an ad for the 2nd quarter that'll actually apply for the next three quarters, for the rest of the year and for the next few years, which is effective the 2nd quarter. We also have now the earn-out for the Givaudan transaction.
You could think about those two, the DSM transaction, which is what's been driving that licensing revenue, and it's specifically around the earn-out in the DSM transaction. Now starting this quarter, in the 2nd quarter, we're adding the Givaudan earn-out to that, to that flow. There are from time to time any milestone payments or any new transactions that are in process that we might that might actually contribute to licensing. Those are really the three buckets. It's DSM, which you've been seeing, Givaudan, which is new starting in the 2nd quarter, and then the third bucket is any milestone payments or any new deals we might do for molecules that'll contribute to licensing revenue as we go through the rest of the year. Han?
Han Kieftenbeld (CFO)
Yeah, let me, let me add just, kind of perhaps one mechanical comment for the benefit of everybody, as I know you're thinking about modeling and whatnot. As John said, DSM, we've obviously had that for the full year 2022. It's a three-year arrangement. That means, we have this current year, 2023, and then next year, 2024, in terms of generating that earn-out income. You referenced the true-up. The true-up is really nothing more than to say, as we progress through a given year like we did last year, we do that based on sell-through estimates.
That we share in this case with DSM, that's on to the best of our abilities because it's based on sell-through. We were a little bit on the conservative side, and we had a bit of an adjustment on the year that we did in the, or that we accounted for in Q1. That's that piece. As it relates to Givaudan, the transaction that we just completed, that will start this quarter. It's on a 12-month, so it's not quite on a calendar year, it's on a 12-month cycle. We get start May 1st, so basically we get two months in this current quarter and then every quarter, a full quarter going forward.
The way that will work is, as I said, on a 12-month cycle instead of a calendar year. A little different cadence with quarter to quarter. We will do our best estimates on the sell-through and how we recognize the revenue.
Operator (participant)
The next question is from Chad Wiatrowski of TD Cowen. Please go ahead.
Chad Wiatrowski (Equity Research Analyst)
Hey, everyone. Thanks for the question. I'm Chad Wiatrowski on for Steven Mah. On the biomanufacturing JV, yeah, could you just maybe assign any expected timeline around when you think those negotiations would be completed? What type of additional revenue capacity would that provide?
John Melo (President and CEO)
Chad, thanks for being on. I think we've learnt our lesson from the Givaudan transaction, and I think it's good that we don't put any specific timeline. I think we've said that we're in the middle of negotiation. That's the other lesson, is it's not healthy, especially in a competitive process, to really put out specific timelines. We won't do that. What I will tell you is from a P&L impact, the way the current discussions are going, we would consolidate and therefore continue to report the revenue and the financials from our biomanufacturing as a result of the JV. That I can share with you, but timing we'll leave off the table for now.
Chad Wiatrowski (Equity Research Analyst)
Got it. Thanks. On the just advanced proceeds, with the three strategic transactions, could you sort of speak to what gives you conviction of being able to bring those payments forward for the respective partners?
John Melo (President and CEO)
We are, again, in active discussions for multiple sources. One of them, actually with a partner directly and the other, actually with two of them, with the partners directly and the other alternative sources that provide that kind of financial instrument. Without getting into detail, my reason for confidence is that, you know, the performance so far on our earn-outs have worked pretty well with our expectation. I think as Han just referenced regarding 22, we actually earned a bit more than what we thought based on trueing up the year. We have a lot of confidence in the earn-outs themselves and our performance against the earn-outs. There were three partners that are well-respected companies, and we understand the relationship and can talk to the contracts quite clearly.
Again, based on where we are in discussions, we have a good level of confidence that this is something we can pull forward and execute on. That being said, it's not done until it's done. We have work to do to get it done, but it is a substantial amount of cash to bring forward and something that we think can be quite a good contribution to our year's cash needs.
Chad Wiatrowski (Equity Research Analyst)
Appreciate the color. Thanks for the questions.
John Melo (President and CEO)
Thanks, Chad.
Operator (participant)
We have time for one more question from Graham Tanaka of Tanaka Capital Management. Please go ahead.
Graham Tanaka (President and Chief Investment Officer)
Yeah. Yeah. Hi, guys. Thank you. Just on the out of stock and the inability to ship what you wanted to in the 1st quarter, could you just estimate how much revenues you lost from being out of stock or having shortages? If that, how much of that might continue for the 2nd quarter?
John Melo (President and CEO)
Hey, Graham, nice to have you on the call. Just to be clear that the out of stocks were either POs we had received or demand from consumers for products that we didn't have available to sell. I wanted to clarify what we mean by out of stocks. When we look across the brand portfolio, I can tell you, the brands have quantified somewhere in the magnitude of about $10 million revenue equivalent in the 1st quarter. Again, we've brought back quite a few of those products. It is not all back in stock. There are still some brands that have some of their key products, out of stock. I really don't wanna provide a view or guidance on that issue specifically.
I think we've given what we will on guidance, which is expect us to deliver on what we've said, for the following quarters based on what we gave you back in March for guidance. We believe we can do that, even in managing with some of the out-of-stock issues we have faced, just like we demonstrated in the 1st quarter.
Graham Tanaka (President and Chief Investment Officer)
Changing subject real quickly. On the true-ups and the earn-outs, did you fully capture what you expected from last in the 1st quarter? Are there more to be falling in to benefit the 2nd quarter? In the Q4 conference call, you suggested it might take a couple to get the true-ups.
John Melo (President and CEO)
Yeah, that two different issues. I think what we captured in the 1st quarter was true-up around the DSM earn-out. I think Han explained that quite well. I think we've been conservative in what we take in for revenue. Annually, we look back based on information from the partner. If there is a true-up, it gets recognized. I think Han has captured that in the 1st quarter. I think beyond that, we did reference a milestone that was outstanding. That milestone remains outstanding. It is not part of the earn-out structure that Han has talked to. It is not part of the DSM piece. I just wanna leave that aside and keep the earn-out clean and the true-up the way it occurred, Graham.
Graham Tanaka (President and Chief Investment Officer)
Okay. Just a feeling so people can... There's a lot of confusion about how much the earn-outs might be going forward, even longer term, because you've got at least three contracts or agreements, and it's hard for investors to understand. What is kind of a range of expectations of earn-outs that you could achieve minimum, maximum this year versus last year and maybe even next year? Thank you.
John Melo (President and CEO)
Yeah. I'm not going to speculate and break that down by year. What I'll tell you is contractually what is outstanding in earn-outs and milestones for the period, and that number is about $294 million over the next, call it, two to three years. That is outstanding in earn-out payments. Again, that's the max earn-out. As you know, there's always risk on earn-outs 'cause they're performance-based. We've been very good so far at realizing what we expect, but again, there's always risk 'cause it's based on how well we perform. $294 million is what is currently outstanding in earn-outs and milestones over the next two to three years.
Graham Tanaka (President and Chief Investment Officer)
Okay, great. Sort of related to that, investors or analysts are trying to understand or project what your gross margin might be, targeted longer term for consumer and ingredients, the ingredients including earn-outs. Thank you. Manufacturing margins. Thank you.
John Melo (President and CEO)
Yeah. I'm going to. You asked me both questions, ingredients and consumer. I'll give you the consumer. The fact that we're in the middle of a negotiation for manufacturing JV, I'd rather not put out numbers without that JV being complete, 'cause obviously that JV has a big impact in our manufacturing footprint and how it operates. We think positive, but it needs to get done, right? From a consumer perspective, you know, we, I would say the midpoint of where we expect to be is right around 65% on the consumer gross profit side. I'd expect again that there's upside based on how well we execute Fit to Win and our Interphos manufacturing, and that is in process. Think about 65 as midpoint.
It could be better, slightly less, and we're focused on executing that by really implementing Fit to Win and moving what'll be about 60% or so of our consumer goods to Interphos around middle of the year, 3rd quarter. By the end of the year, hopefully be at about 80% of our consumer manufacturing down in Brazil. That has a significant impact. I think we've quoted before, at least a 50% improvement just in Biossance cost of goods. Then we obviously expect to see gains across other products that we move to Brazil.
Operator (participant)
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to John Melo for closing remarks.
John Melo (President and CEO)
Thank you, Kate. I didn't get to say, thanks to Graham for his last question. I appreciate everybody being on, and, sorry, Amit, that we did not get to hear your question. Hopefully in a one-on-one we can follow up with you. I really appreciate everybody being on. Really thank you for joining us today and for your continued interest and support. If we didn't get to your question, please follow up with our investor relations team, which, Han or, one of us can make sure we get to you, we'll get back to you with a response.
Again, we're, we really are happy to see the traction in our business, but most importantly, to see our costs get under control, to be more disciplined with the investments we make, and to really see Fit to Win come through and get complete with our strategic review to ensure that our cost base is competitive and we really have a self-funded business that can execute and achieve our overall objectives. With that, I'll close out and thank everybody and wish everybody a good evening.
Operator (participant)
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.