Eden Research PLC (AIM:EDEN, OTCQB:EDNSF) CEO Sean Smith talked with Proactive about the company's strong performance in the first half of the year, including a 65% jump in revenue to £1.89 million.
Smith highlighted the key role of regulatory approvals in driving growth, with recent wins in markets like California, Spain, and Germany expanding Eden's reach. He emphasized that regulatory hurdles are both challenging and crucial, as they unlock significant new markets for products like Mevalone.
Proactive: You've reported a big jump in first-half revenue as you continue to clear those regulatory hurdles. And more to come, I should imagine?
Sean Smith: Yes. Good morning, and thank you for the invitation to be here. Yeah, we were reasonably pleased with the progress we've made in the first half. For those who follow the story, they'll realise that it's always a story of two halves. As is any interesting event. But in any case, we were pleased with the progress that we've made.
We've seen good fundamental growth, year over year from our core business, which is specifically the products that we have registered now. A lot of that growth is actually coming from new applications for the product itself, and strong fundamental underlying growth in the products themselves. In addition to that, we've had some benefits from new product introductions where we were able to realize an amount of revenue early in the year, which is obviously very helpful.
Apart from the numbers alone, we've been very happy to see some good progress on the regulatory front. And for those who are relatively new to the story or have forgotten, the long and short of it is that regulatory approvals are our lifeblood. They are what ultimately drives the growth of our business. And so when new authorizations come through from regulators around the world, for example, in California, Germany, etc., these really are major milestones. They introduce new opportunities for us, they expand our overall addressable market, and fundamentally, they drive sales.
Proactive: You mentioned the approval for Mevalone in California. You also had those label expansions in Spain, Germany, and Czechia. And you say in the results that you're working with your partners, Sipcam, to look at South America as well. So Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. A lot more to come then on that side, Sean?
Sean Smith: Yes, absolutely. The regulatory process is a difficult one to predict. We never know what the timing is going to be precisely because, of course, these decisions are in the hands of the regulators. What we do know is these cases are being worked on, and there's progress being made.
To give you a good example of how that works, when we received authorization from Poland some time ago, we really expected authorizations across the rest of the central zone in the EU within 120 days because that's what the regulation requires. But in reality, that happens very rarely. Germany and the Czech Republic were far later than that 120-day window.
So again, stay tuned. We have quite a lot of regulatory action ongoing at the moment. We've recently strengthened the team on the regulatory front and will continue to make progress as quickly as we can.
Proactive: You also mentioned Ecovelex. Can you tell us what you're planning for that at the moment?
Sean Smith: With Ecovelex, we continue to work with Corteva, our partner on that project. We were successful in securing an emergency use late last year for Italy. Seeds were treated, and I think it was approximately 225,000 to 250,000 hectares worth of maize planted across Italy.
We’ve been very happy with that development. We intend to continue pursuing opportunistic regulatory authorizations in territories where there are no reasonable alternatives available to growers. This means we are pursuing additional emergency approvals for the 2025 growing season.
As with all regulatory action, we can't anticipate whether we'll be successful. Most of the times we've pursued these, we have been successful, but not every time. There are never any guarantees. If all goes to plan, we should see a repeat of what happened in late 2023 for the 2024 growing season, which will have an impact on us in 2024 and into 2025.
Proactive: You talked about expanding your team, Sean, so commercial, laboratory teams as well as regulatory. That’s obviously put pressure on margins in the short term. But I should imagine you get long-term gains from that?
Sean Smith: Yeah, ultimately, we had remained light on the commercial side of things out of necessity, really, in an effort to conserve cash as much as possible. But there's a point in which that becomes diminishing returns. We began to realize that we needed more horsepower on the commercial side.
We've been very fortunate to appoint two very experienced individuals. One has a tremendous amount of experience with Mevalone, even down to the farmer level. The other gentleman has more than 12 years of experience with Syngenta, bringing good exposure to both conventional pesticides and biocontrol.
We're already seeing the benefits of bringing this expertise onboard, focusing on growth. The primary role of the commercial team is to drive growth, and now we have the resources to pursue opportunities that we previously had to set aside due to lack of resources.
Proactive: After growing revenue by 65% to £1.89 million in the first half, are you on track to meet your full-year targets?
Sean Smith: That’s exactly what we're anticipating. But as I said earlier, it's always a year of two halves. It’s premature to say how the second half will go. We believe we're very much on track, but a lot of our performance is tied to regulatory approvals. If those come through, we’re in good shape. If they don’t, we'll adjust accordingly. But overall, we're pleased with the progress we're making. We're very pleased with the recent label extensions, like the Spanish label, which is significant and something we’re working hard to replicate in other territories.